


A Snowball's Chance in Hell

by tsukinofaerii



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Main Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Minor Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game), it's there but it's not the point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 42,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28470279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukinofaerii/pseuds/tsukinofaerii
Summary: Zagreus, grandson of Lady Demeter, has a plan to end the long winter brought on by his grandmother's grief. All he has to do is break into the Underworld and free his mother. How hard could it be?
Comments: 51
Kudos: 180





	1. Prologue: a Knot in the Weave

**Author's Note:**

> This was initially inspired by this absolutely gorgeous art on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bloodwrit/status/1316127686717132800 It rather quickly went off the rails, and now only bears a passing resemblance to the original concept. I have only myself to blame. Happy New Year, Hades fandom, and thanks for giving me a way out of my slump. 
> 
> Check the end notes for specific content warnings.

All know of the Fates, those daughters of Night who work the loom on which the threads of our lives are woven. Mortal or God, there is no escaping their power. They spin our tales and bind us to the inescapable tapestry of history. Suffering or ecstasy, war or peace, all is as to their design.

However, any weaver knows this one truth: no matter the maker, no matter the intent, the same cloth may appear very different when viewed from the other side.

Behold, one such reversal.

* * *

Persephone kept her head down as she forced her way through the blizzard. As soon as she passed the Temple doors her world world had been reduced to white. It was piled high enough that, even had she not been pregnant, it would have been difficult, and she was so cold that it felt less like shivering than convulsing. The snow blotted out everything: the sun, the horizon, any trees beyond arm's length. So much _snow,_ and already the pains were coming closer together, as if the new life within her knew it was the worst possible time and was determined to make it even harder.

She knew she should have left sooner, but she'd hoped Hades would change his mind. Foolish. As if he'd ever changed his mind about anything.

None of it could be helped. Snow-blind and in pain, she had to keep going until she found somewhere safe, whatever that meant. There was no way to tell how far she'd gotten from the Temple, and she couldn't know how close was too close. She had to keep moving and find shelter, somewhere far away from her husband's domain. She'd go back— _they'd_ go back when it was safe. Whenever that could be. What else was there to do?

It was a cruel fate, that which the Fates demanded of her. She couldn't bear it. How could any mother? All she could do was push onward, and hope she wasn't walking in circles. 

Some amount of time later hands grabbed at her from the darkness— _darkness? When had it grown dark?_ —like those blasted Wringers that had caused her so much difficulty in Tartarus. She fought them off, using the little strength she had to break away. It was so _cold_ , though, and there was nowhere to go to actually escape. Another contraction nearly brought her to her knees and then the hands were back. Gentler, this time, a body blocking the wind from her face.

"—n't be out here. Where's Cha—oh _no_ —"

Instead of strangling, the hands lifted. Held. She felt movement, so swift that it made her head spin. That was the only part of her that registered anything at all beyond the pain and the intense urge to push. The rest of her had gone numb. She'd even stopped shivering.

Movement stopped. It was replaced by light and noise, so much that she groaned and tried to hide her face. If she succeeded, she couldn't feel it, and it didn't help. Familiar voices rose around her. Old friends. Family. The words blurred together into meaningless chaos, much as everything else had.

Persephone thought she was crying. She wanted to cry. Her body didn't hurt anymore, and that was more terrifying than any suffering she had felt before. The pain of labor had vanished entirely. All of the world sideways, exhaustion and cold had achieved what the fiends of the Underworld had failed. 

She'd been too late.

"My—my son..." The lights were blessedly dimming behind her closed eyelids. She was so _tired_ , her tongue felt thick in her mouth. Hands like ice clutched hers. Even that felt distant. "So sorry... Zagreus..."

The warm, welcoming embrace of the Styx rose up to wrap around her soul and pull her down. It left behind a cold, empty shell as it carried her home.


	2. Olympus: a Long Winter

"I really can't believe you sometimes." Artemis's hand hovered over the hastily-applied bandage on Zagreus's arm, bouncing as if she wanted to pat it but was afraid to. Instead she plucked at the linen anxiously, worrying at the ties, adjusting how it sat against his skin. "How ever did you manage to get yourself attacked by a _squirrel_? They're not usually vicious."

Zagreus, who had an unfortunate amount of experience being injured by things that weren't usually vicious, didn't feel the need to respond. He just let Artemis's anxious babble wash over him, familiar and—in its own way—comforting. The day in the mortal realm was, unusually, a particularly kind one. The morning's snowfall had only lasted long enough to cover the world in a delicate blanket rather than anything more difficult to traverse. While clouded as ever, the sky was a particularly lovely shade of gray, reminiscent of the pearls Poseidon occasionally brought from the sea.

"—perhaps I should take you back to Olympus," Artemis continued awkwardly as she rubbed some sort of salve on a scratch he hadn't even noticed. "You're still bleeding. And what if it had an illness? Lady Demeter would never forgive me. She barely allows these trips at all."

He twitched. It wasn't unusual for him to find himself being a voice of reason. It still irked him. "I won't keel over if you leave me alone for a few hours, and you haven't seen Callisto or the nymphs in weeks," he reminded her. "I'll be fine. Come find me when you're done hunting."

Her nose scrunched as she visibly argued with herself. That was one of the things he liked about Artemis. Unlike everyone else on Olympus, she didn't try to hide anything. She was honest, and her feelings painted themselves on her face like the camouflage she used to blend into the trees. Just then, the feeling was _longing_. She _really_ missed Callisto.

"You know they don't like it when you bring me anyway," Zagreus pressed. She twitched, guilty, and he seized the advantage. "All I wanted was to get off the mountain. I'm here, right? Go frolic for a while. You deserve it."

Dark eyes pinned him, sharp as if he were a hare in her sights. "You swear you'll be alright without me?"

"I promise."

Artemis still didn't look certain, but she nodded and packed up her back of supplies. It wasn't often that a goddess had to travel with bandages, but they'd learned to the first time she took Zagreus hunting and he'd stepped on a dropped arrowhead. "I won't be long. Don't go far." Her head stayed down, antler headdress pointed directly at him in what was probably some sort of threat. "Call if you need me."

Zagreus nodded obediently and stayed sitting as Artemis vanished off. He stayed exactly where he was long after he lost sight of her—not being able to see the goddess of the hunt was in no way a sign that she couldn't see _you_. Eventually his ass started to get numb and he estimated that either Artemis had gone or she was never going to leave at all, so he risked standing up. When he wasn't immediately pounced on and ordered to sit back down, he picked a deer path and started to wander, breathing in the crisp air and watching the life that—in spite of Lady Demeter's best efforts—flourished around him.

He followed the easiest path between the trees, pausing to examine the tiny splashes of greenery that had dared an early visit. He liked to think he blended in, at least a little. Instead of his usual gray chiton and deep blue, Artemis dressed him in browns. Mostly it was fur; she insisted that it caught less on the brambles, all evidence from Zagreus's personal experience aside. Odd bits of leather wrapped around his feet, tied with cords. In theory, it was supposed to help keep him from leaving obvious tracks. In practice, it just ended up as a frozen mess stuck to the bottom of his feet and he _still_ left tracks.

None of it saved him from the wildlife, either. Squirrels weren't his only nemesis. Snakes and insects frequently came for his blood as well. Once there had been an incident with wolves, and another time he'd very nearly staggered into a cave that held a hibernating bear. If he hadn't survived all of those instances, he would almost have suspected the Fates were attempting to send a message.

For once, though, it was a peaceful day. The expected assault had passed, and he could breathe in peace. Snowdrops waved in the gentle breeze. A rabbit hopped by and entirely failed to maul him. Birds kept to their branches for once and instead sang their hearts out. The breeze whistled in the trees, filling the air with a gentle creak and groan.

It was so peaceful that he almost missed the shouting for the birdsong. He froze, straining to hear past the noises of nature. It came again, a long minute later: desperate, breathless pleas for help.

Branches, both green-new and brittle-old snapped in his wake as Zagreus charged towards the cries. Jagged ends scratched his skin, wrecked Artemis's questionably-done bandage work. Fresh blood trailed in his wake, splashes of red on white. It was only a little pain, though, and hardly slowed him down. Zagreus rounded the corner of the path and skidded to a sharp stop right at the edge of an iced-over river. Or, a mostly iced-over river. A chunk of ice had gone missing, exposing the fast-running waters below.

A man clung to the edge of the ice. Water soaked his hair and clothing, while cold turned his skin pale. He clawed desperately for purchase, scrabbled to try and pull himself out. It seemed like every foot he gained came at a blood price. Red speckled the area around him where he'd cut his hands trying to escape.

"Hold on!" Zagreus eased out onto the river. His feet probed carefully, testing the ice as he went. While he had hope that if he died it would only be an inconvenience, his own red blood promised no certainty. The gods knew that his mother hadn't come back once childbirth had taken her. Still, it wasn't in him to walk away, no matter the risk. He just had to do it, and hope. The ice underfoot was still delicate, but his frost-touched feet hardened it as he made his careful way over to the hole.

By the time he'd gotten there, the man had given up escaping, reduced to merely no longer sliding deeper in. Gently as he could, Zagreus slid his hands around the mortal's wrists. He pulled as delicately, with one eye always on the dark waters below. "Grab onto me. Okay now... come on..."

The man clung to his arms as Zagreus carefully—so carefully!—pulled him from the waters and onto the river bank. Blood smeared his arms as the cuts from the previous failed escapes broke open. Even once he was free, though, the mortal didn't seem much better. He curled in on himself, pale and wracked with a tense stillness that seemed so much worse than any thrashing. His breath came in faint, sharp gasps that didn't even fog the air.

Zagreus didn't know what to do. He thought of stripping off the sodden cloak that clung to him, but surely it was warmer with it than without. In any case, the mortal had a grip on it that Zagreus feared would require breaking bones to release. "Are you alright, sir? Is there anything I can do to help?"

"... Helped.... Plenty..." The mortal's voice was soft and choked, rough from shouting. "Sorry, son. You... tried..." A small, jagged shudder wracked him. The shiver, if that was what it was, didn't last. His barely focused eyes lifted to look over Zagreus's shoulder. "Oh. _You._ "

There was no helping it. Zagreus looked.

Another man stood behind his shoulder. Black cloak wrapped tight around broad shoulders and hooded his head, draped down to cover him to his feet. The contrast in color emphasized a sharp, serious expression made all the more stern by how the late-winter light cast shadows across his features. It looked far too thin for the weather, but Zagreus wasn't exactly one to know how to dress properly. He was always cold.

The strangest thing, though, was the scythe strapped to his back. If there was one thing Zagreus knew well, it was seasons, and it was nowhere near time for even the minuscule harvest that Demeter's winter allowed for.

"Do you know him?" Zagreus demanded of the stranger. "I—I don't know what to... He fell in the river." 

Surprise flickered over the man's face. His eyes flicked over Zagreus's body, from his leather-swaddled feet buried in the snow up to the length of ragged brown fur covering his head and even the torn and bloody bandages that still clung loosely to his arm. His eyes lingered on Zagreus's, no doubt taking in their odd mismatched coloring until Zagreus turned his head uncomfortably.

He didn't like people looking at his eyes. Fate-touched was what Queen Hera called it. _Lucky to be a god_ , according to Dionysus.

The stranger seemed to come to some conclusion, because he shook his head and stepped forward to kneel by them. His hand, so pale it was nearly the same color as the snow, pressed against the mortal's chest. Long silver hair fell forward to puddle atop his hand, and he shoved it back with an annoyed grimace. "Not really. I'm here to collect him. In a way."

"Well, you're going to have to help me warm him up before you can take him anywhere."

The look Zagreus got for that could only be described as amused. "No. I won't."

Under their hands, the tension had slowly seeped away from the mortal he'd saved. A smile graced his blue lips as he looked up at them. His breath was shallower. Weaker. "Not... a bad..."

He never finished the sentence.

Even the birds hardly dared chirp in the silence. The body under Zagreus's hands was still. No more a struggle for breath, no faint patter of a heart under too-fragile ribs. He didn't know what to say, what to think. He'd never seen anyone die before. Animals, yes, but... never a person.

Mortals died, of course they did, but suddenly so many jests and casual interests that had surrounded him on Olympus had an unpleasant echo behind them. His grandmother's winters had been a quirk. Her wrath spread across the world, as was her right. But the evidence of what _her right_ wrought was still and terrible under his hands.

Gentle fingers wrapped around his wrists and pulled him back onto his heels. Zagreus went along with it, too deep in his thoughts to resist. He couldn't see what the stranger did, precisely. Closed the mortal's eyes, yes. Turned his head so the jaw no longer hung slack. Pushed back his hair to bare his face. There was something more, though. Whatever it was, it left an expression of peace on the body, as if he'd already moved somewhere the biting cold could no longer reach him.

A laugh lodged in Zagreus's throat, choking him. Hadn't that been exactly what had happened? 

"You should go somewhere. Warm up. Save what time you have." The stranger rose and took a step backwards. His voice, which had already been pleasantly deep, gained an odd echo, born out of some trick of the trees and the wind. "You're almost as cold as he is."

"Warm up?" Zagreus demanded, incredulous. He twisted to glare. "A man is dead. Shouldn't we do something for—"

The stranger was gone.

Zagreus looked around the clearing, but there was no sign of where he'd gone. No dark-shrouded figure lurked in the woods, or behind a tree. It was as empty as if he'd never been there at all.

 _Useless._ "Leave me with all the work, of course," Zagreus grumbled, dusting the snow off his shoulders as he considered the body. He supposed he could just leave it. Someone would find it eventually. Mortals supposedly took care of their own, the stranger's abandonment aside. It could be someone else's problem.

Except... that just didn't seem _right_.

Lacking other options and too troubled to walk away, Zagreus did what he could for what was left behind. He wrapped the man in his wet cloak and tucked him between the roots of what he thought was a particularly nice tree. Its buds hadn't come in, but life stirred in it. If the body remained until the snow had melted, it would be bright with blossoms. A nice place to be a corpse, if you had to be one.

Then there was the next problem to solve: money. Hermes hadn't come yet, or... Well, Zagreus didn't think he'd come yet. He might have been and gone, but it wasn't like Hermes not to say hello, even if he didn't slow down for it. Regardless, Hermes would take care of things and the boatman would require his fare. Zagreus didn't have any coin, so he collected a bouquet of snowdrops and tucked them inside the man's cloak. With luck Charon would be charmed by the change in his usual fee, rather than leaving the poor man on the shores of the Styx until someone took care of him.

Maybe that was where the stranger went, to retrieve a coin for the ferry. It seemed unlikely, but Zagreus had already discovered that he knew far too little of mortals.

"Cousin!" Artemis's voice rang out through the woods. Somehow, her call blended through the trees and wind. It was, Zagreus was certain, cheating. How could anyone hunt properly with her when she could shout and not even disturb the birds on their branches?

"Here!" He followed Artemis's voice, but not before giving one last look around as he went. Still nothing.

_Tsch. Mortals._

* * *

"What is this I hear about you risking your life for a _mortal_?" Demeter loomed before him, three times her usual size. Ice crackled across her skin and in the long, pale braids that wrapped about her shoulders like a shawl. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

Zagreus knelt at his grandmother's feet, head bowed. The room smelled like frost and ozone, a snowstorm about to strike. In the massive, arched halls that were her domain on Olympus, she was the center of the storm. Pillars carved of ice hardly provided shelter to speak of, and the wailing wind across a frozen tundra lashed like a whip across the skin. The weight of the snow across his shoulders, usually a light dusting, pressed him to the floor. He had to use all of his strength to stay upright against her cold fury. It wasn't often she summoned him so formally to the frozen cave that was her domain on Olympus. When she did, there was always trouble.

"While I was hunting with Artemis, there was a man who had fallen through the ice of the river. I pulled him free, but was unable to save him." Strictly true, in the very essence of the details. Old experience had taught him to never offer more than that. Even if it wasn't incriminating, his grandmother would view any further attempt at explanation as an excuse, and grow more furious for it.

"You crossed ice you knew was weak to save one who was not as worms beneath your feet. One just like those who took my Kore—your _mother_ —from us." Demeter's face remained still and pale as an unpainted marble bust. Not a hint of any expression marked it. That was worse than if she'd actually been scowling.

The air crackled. It had grown so cold it hurt to breathe. Zagreus's skin burned, and the bones of his feet ached with the ice forming around them. It crept up around his ankles, trapping him in place as snow collected heavier and heavier across his shoulders. Usually his grandmother's power kept him from feeling the cold too deeply. Evidently she had retracted that to make her point.

And what a point to make. "I knew that your ice would never break under my feet," he managed to say, as respectfully as he could when the very breath felt like it would freeze in his lungs.

"Irrelevant. You should never have risked such a thing." Light shined in her blue, blue eyes. A killing light. "We have no idea if you are closer to your mother in power, or to me. You do not know what the consequences of your actions may have been, had you proved less fortunate."

Through clenched teeth, he said, "I could not leave a man to drown. Not when it might have been in my power to save him."

Something in the air softened imperceptibly. It was still cold, so cold it seeped into his bones, but he could feel the worst of her wrath ease a little. Only a little, but at least it wasn't getting worse.

After a painfully long silence, Demeter murmured, "You are kinder than they deserve. Much like your mother was. And look what it cost her. All of us."

"I would not dishonor her memory by being any other way."

It seemed to be the right thing to say. No part of the room warmed, but the cold lost its knife edge. Demeter's power spread over him in a numbing wave, protecting him from itself. He refused to let her see him relax, but he couldn't hide the deep breath he had to take to replace what the cold had stolen. 

She smiled. The effects of her punishment had clearly been noted, and pleased her.

 _Blizzards_.

With a sweep of her icy mantle, Demeter turned away to stare out a balcony at the clouded sky. It was all illusion, or perhaps a sign of her power. They were well above the cloud line. But the sun never showed its face in her presence, not even on Olympus. "You may go. Take care that you not make such a foolish mistake again."

Zagreus staggered upright. The ice that had formed around his feet broke off in painful chunks. Some of it took flesh with it, as if it had melted close to his skin and then bonded when it froze over. He bowed to his grandmother's back, not willing to risk that she couldn't see him in the reflection of the ice, and let himself out the door.

Safe in the warmer halls outside Demeter's rooms, he paused to inspect the damage. Frostbite had touched his fingers and nose. They were numb beyond the usual, and would take some time to heal up. In a few places the metal of his armor had grown so cold it left burns. His laurel had frozen into solid ice in his hair. It would take weeks before it thawed again.

Worst done by was his cloak. The blast of cold had frozen the snow solid, and the cloth under it too. As he shook it out, chunks broke off, leaving sad little piles of ice and cloth on the floor. There'd be no healing _that_.

Grimacing, he shrugged off the entire mess and left it to melt. Maybe his grandmother would step in the puddle.

* * *

Warm light spilled from the chamber door, leading to a room crammed from floor to ceiling by scrolls and parchment, old piles of tapestries and half-filled blueprints for masterpieces. Dark polished wood gleamed, hidden traces of long-lost desks and tables visible where the piles parted. The clutter lent the space a mad air, but there was a system to it. Each pile was perfectly balanced, and the paths absolutely clear, if narrow. It was a constructed mess, and more charming for it.

What clutter didn't fill, a single, massive loom did, taking up easily a quarter of the room on its own. No work had been started on it, but it had an air of expectation. Great things would occur, if only it were strung.

Zagreus hovered in one of the many, many doorways, and watched the mistress of the labyrinth at one of the few clear tabletops visible in the space. She had her head bowed, sketching out long, curving lines that would surely form her next work. Gold lined her eyes and kissed her lips, flecked over her cheeks as if they'd been dusted with it.

That gold refracted the light as she smiled. "I can hear you, you know." Ariadne didn't look away from her parchment, but he could still somehow feel her attention on him. "Are you here to watch? I promise, it's very boring. You'll collect dust."

"No, I..." Zagreus shuffled his feet awkwardly. "You were mortal once, weren't you?"

As soon as he said it, he knew that the question was a wrong one. It was too late to take it back though. She went suddenly still, staring down at the parchment under her hands. A droplet of ink collected at the tip of her quill, growing fatter and fatter until it fell free to splatter over her work. Ariadne didn't so much as flinch.

He bit the inside of his cheek and waited. It was all he could do. Apologies wouldn't serve—in his family, they only ever made things worse. Intentions never mattered. It was just a question of how vengeance would strike, and when.

By some blessing, Ariadne was kinder than his other relatives. When she recovered, she took a breath and looked up. Something old and very tired lingered in her brown eyes, but no spark of imminent doom lit her fingertips. She didn't even close her maze behind him, though it would have been the least of her right. "I was, yes. Once, long ago."

Zagreus swallowed. Maybe it was worth... "I'm sorry." His toes curled in the patch of ice that had spread around him in a delicate spray of frost. "I didn't mean to remind you of anything unpleasant."

The unhappy curve of her lips lightened into a true smile. "Unpleasant. Yes, it was unpleasant. But it has brought me joy, so much more than—than I ever could have felt had my original plans born fruit. I can hardly spare a complaint." She set aside her quill and braced herself upright against the table. Candlelight flickered in her hair as she tipped her head to look at him. The grape vines tangled in her tight curls to form a halo, greenery brilliant as a jewel against her dark skin. A gift from Dionysus, probably. He loved bringing her gifts.

She was lovely. Everyone on Mount Olympus was beautiful, of course, but there had always been something different about her. Gold-painted nails were kept short and practical rather than whatever length she wanted. Her hair didn't tumble in artful locks and her teeth weren't perfectly straight. She had scars. Calluses. _Ares_ never had scars, and in all of his arms training Zagreus had never developed a callus.

But when Ariadne smiled, it stole the air from the room. It was imperfect and real and impossibly temporary in a way nothing else on Olympus was. 

If anyone could answer his questions, it would be her.

Subterfuge had never been Zagreus's strong suit, so he didn't try. "You died, too. Like..." His thoughts flitted back to the pale, cold man in the snow. It had been weeks and still the memory haunted him, but it wasn't one anyone else would care about. "Like my mother did."

It was Ariadne's turn to catch her breath. "I should have known you would ask about that one day." Using those scarred and callused hands, she cleared away the scrolls and books on her desktop, then pulled out a second chair. "Come. Sit with me, and I will tell you what it's like to die."

* * *

Beyond Olympus, Demeter's power still had full sway over all, not merely over Zagreus. Spring had technically arrived, and still signs of her anger lingered in a cold breeze and the lean, hungry look on the animals. It would be some weeks, maybe a month or more before Helios finish wresting some small control of the world from Demeter's grasp. It was a fight they had every year and would continue to have every year until the end of time.

Helios wasn't a god Zagreus spoke with often. He was Grandmother's brother, but the two of them bickered constantly, and he used his duties to avoid both of them more often than not. His sun reached through her clouds and warmed the earth, whether she wanted it to or not. Usually, not.

Still, what little Zagreus knew of him, he knew one thing for certain: Helios was the most punctual person ever to touch foot on Olympus, mortal or divine. You could set a sundial by him. Soon enough, he'd win the fight and Demeter's power would wane no matter how many clouds she threw up. And then...

Zagreus tried not to think about it. When he did, the stomach-twisting sense of guilt threatened to tie him in knots. Better not to think, and just _do_. It was the right thing, and the end result would be worth it.

Instead of brooding, he tucked his fur-wrapped feet away under him and turned his thoughts towards the lake. Artemis would be gone all day, cavorting with her friends. He had time.

"Come to me, fishies..." Zagreus squinted at the surface of the water. Had that been a shadow? Or just an illusion of the clouds overhead? Uncle Poseidon's rod had a way of bringing out the fish, but it wasn't a perfect magic. He was too early or too late far more than he liked to admit.

"I would have thought you'd be done with water." 

"AH!" Zagreus jumped, just as the bobber tied to his line sank. He fumbled for the rod, but already it was done. The line was limp; his catch had gotten away and taken his bait with it. "Damn it." He reeled in his hook and glared back at the figure over his shoulder.

It was the same man from before, and he looked even more out of place surrounded by the slow creep of green and warmth than he had before in the snow. The shadows of the trees curled around him, dappled his pale skin, of which there was... There was a lot of it. He was barefoot, dressed mostly in his chiton and not much else, in spite of the cold. The way it was pinned looked like he might have had other clothes on under it, once, but if he'd had other layers they'd been stripped away. What was left barely covered the necessities, leaving bare long legs and muscles that—

Zagreus turned back to the lake so quickly his head spun. His cheeks _burned_. More evidence that his grandmother was losing her fight to keep spring at bay, and most definitely not a sign of embarrassment. He tossed out his line again and watched the strange man from the corner of his eye, where it was safest. "That was a river. This is a lake. Completely different. What are you doing here?"

"I have business nearby. I can't stay long." In spite of his words, the stranger took a seat next to Zagreus, as if he had every intention of lingering. "Caught anything?"

"Not yet. My aunt says patience is the first step to winning any battle. Even against fish." Zagreus finally found the courage to look at him directly again. As soon as he did, he frowned. There was something off. Not just the change in his clothes, though those were odd enough. His belt looked as if it had been hastily made from a strip of leather, though his clothes were clearly too fine to have been meant for such a ramshackle decision. Zagreus had been certain he'd had a gorget before, and...

Just like that, he had it. "You cut your hair." It hadn't been meant to be accusative, but that was how it came out. He frowned and reached up to ruffle the now-short locks. They looked like they had been cut from the bottom-up, as if someone had simply taken a handful of it by the base and carved it off. What was left framed his face in a long, smooth sweep that turned into something short that looked prickly-soft at the back.

Zagreus checked.

Yup: soft.

"It got in my way." After a second too long of a pause, his hand was batted back. "I'm surprised you noticed." The man blinked his strange, pale brown eyes. They were so light they appeared gold; it reminded Zagreus of some of the art pieces that decorated the halls of Olympus. Shining, beautiful works, the finest mortal craftsmanship could produce. 

There was absolutely no way to explain that Zagreus had spent more than a little time thinking about their singular encounter, so he settled on, "Of course I did. What's your name, anyway? I think we're due introductions. If you're not going to run away again, that is."

"Uhhh..." Those odd eyes darted between Zagreus's face and the woods behind him, as if regretting his decision to engage. "You can call me Than. I guess."

That definitely wasn't a name. Maybe a nickname. Probably a lie.

 _Tit for tat, then._ He leaned over, bumping Than's shoulder with his own. "Fine. You can call me Zag. _I guess._ "

He got a frown for that, but if Than was going to call him out on the same trick he himself had just pulled, at least he was smart enough not to go through with it. "Alright, _Zag_. I was wondering if you're... doing okay? Your eye—" 

Between two words, the bobber in the water dropped. Zagreus dived for the line, yanking at it. "No you don't—you're not getting away this time, fish!" A second pair of hands settled over his, helping him pull. Together they managed to reel the massive fish from the water. It was a whopper, green-silver scales agleam as it thrashed out its last moments.

Zagreus turned to Than with a grin. "We caught a trout!"

Than looked down at the fish, then back up at Zagreus. Slowly, an almost shy smile seemed to creep across his face. "Yeah. I guess we did."

* * *

A sweet, high-pitched giggle echoed through the air of Olympus's kitchens. It was a strange contrast to the scales and fish guts that covered Zagreus's hands. His fish didn't look anything at all like the neat, perfect cuts that were served at the feasts, but he thought he might be able to at least make it edible. Not for the first time, he wished he could have let someone else handle it, but Hestia had insisted on the same rules for him as she had for Artemis: if he caught it, he dealt with it.

Maybe fishing wasn't such a good hobby after all.

Movement from above tempted Zagreus to look upward. "So, a little birdie told me that my godling's heart has gone pitter-patter of late." Lady Aphrodite drifted head-first through the ceiling in a cloud of perfume and carefully placed locks of auburn hair. Improbably, they stayed in place even while she was upside down. "I never would have thought someone could warm the ice in those veins. Who is it that has you so stirred up, hm?"

He kept his eyes down, on his work, where it was safest. There was no way she'd heard anything from Artemis. Even if Artemis had seen something, the odds that she'd tell Aphrodite anything were lower than his grandmother suddenly adopting a whole orphanage of mortal children.

Then again, it was Aphrodite. For all he knew, it might actually have been a bird that tattled on him. "It's no one. Just someone I met hunting. It's not important." He yanked the knife, sending a splatter of scales across the sides of the bucket.

It took him far, far too long to realize that Aphrodite hadn't responded. When he glanced up again, her eyes had gone wide, and her lips formed a little _oh_ of shock. He was certain she'd had to have held the expression until he noticed, because as soon as he met her eyes she said, "It's a _mortal_ who's caught your heart, isn't it? Oh, _dearest_. That rarely ends well."

 _Ugh._ He should have known that was coming. "No one's _caught my heart,_ and I'm not in love." Was it still supposed to have a head? Probably not. Zagreus set to sawing it off.

His pointed display of dismissal had a predictable lack of effect. The Goddess of Love finished floating down, choosing to stretch out around the level of his shoulder as if she were reclining on a chaise, leg cocked so her bare foot waved lazily in the air over her back. Rose petals drifted from above, mixing in with the filth of the bucket. " _Of course_ you're not. That sort of mistake would be terribly foolish for someone who has the _lovely_ Lady Demeter's frigid eye upon them. But a little lust never hurt anyone, you know."

Zagreus had known Aphrodite too long not to know exactly what pain _a little lust_ could cause. He'd also known her long enough not to think he had a chance of escaping without giving her _something_. He shook some of the petals off the fish and began with, "Well.... I don't really know much about him. He calls himself Than. He doesn't talk much, and I've only seen him twice. I doubt I will again."

"Is he handsome?" She laced her fingers under her chin. "He would have to be, I imagine, to have captured my godling's heart. Or... perhaps not the _heart_ so much..." Bright pink eyes glinted wickedly. Her perfect lower lip caught between her teeth in an expression of rapturous anticipation.

In spite of his best efforts, Zagreus's thoughts turned back to broad shoulders and muscular arms wrapped around his as they pulled in the fish, that secretive hint of a smile that he'd only managed to catch glimpses of... Heat flushed through him. "Very handsome. He—his hair is pale, and his eyes... His eyes..."

Glowing golden, even in the weak sunlight. Sharp as a blade, missing nothing. As if Than saw parts of Zagreus that even he didn't know existed. Could take them apart and touch every bit with those long fingers of his, and then put him back together better than before.

He'd never felt so _seen_ , before, and it had to be a mortal. The Fates truly did have it out for him, and not only with wildlife.

"He—he has nice eyes." Weak. _Pathetic._ Nice barely began to cover it, but he couldn't seem to form better words. It felt too precious to share, even with the Goddess of Love herself.

The words lodged in his chest didn't need to be said aloud to be heard, apparently. Aphrodite let out a giggle that wouldn't have sounded out of place in a brothel and touched his cheek. Her skin felt blazing against his, and a few droplets of frost melt trickled down his jaw. "Say no more, dearest. I can see by the look in your eye that you are well and truly smitten. No matter what your lips might say, your heart speaks more loudly."

She reached out and tapped one of the falling petals with the tip of her finger. It swirled with glittering energy before settling, neat as could be, in her palm. As it landed, it curled into the shape of a heart. Without so much as asking, she tucked the petal into his hair. Zagreus felt it freeze over, no doubt blending in with the rest of his laurel. But _he_ knew it was there, could feel it fluttering with a gentle warmth that had nothing to do with temperature.

"A gift, to help guide your heart on its path." Task complete, the Goddess of Love pinched his cheek. "And when you have found what lies at the end of that path, I want _all_ of the details, love."

His blush was so bright it sent her back through the ceiling, laughter trailing in her wake like bells.

* * *

Once again, Zagreus found himself in the labyrinth, curled in a chair with his knees to his chest. The _click-clack_ of the monstrous loom filled the air as Ariadne's hands worked in a steady, soothing rhythm. Her golden nails flashed in the light, seeming to dance. He watched her work, cloth forming one line at a time. It was magical. No wonder weaving was the Fates preferred pastime.

The maze of Ariadne's chambers had become a comforting, and comfortable, second home. Unlike his own rooms, Ariadne's held a warmth that reached even through the ice. He'd lost track of how many hours he'd spent there, listening to stories of her life, and of her death, of the places she missed and the ones she was glad to never see again.

"My husband is having a feast to celebrate the beginning of summer. Not that he needs a reason." Her voice was just as steady as her hands, each syllable seeming to hold a weight Zagreus couldn't parse. "Everyone is invited, of course."

"Is that why you summoned me? To tell me about a feast?"

"Not entirely. I have a gift for you." She flashed him a smile, and the movement of the loom eased to a stop. The sudden silence hung like a funerary drape, and the candlelight seemed to dim in mourning. "I noticed that you seem to have lost your old one, and..."

She rose from her seat and turned to a small pile of cloth beside her. Silver fabric glimmered with white threads. They twisted together into a pattern that befuddled the eye and seemed almost impossible to make sense of. Lovingly, Ariadne brushed the loose snow from his shoulders before she whipped it around his shoulders and pinned it in place.

It was a mantle, crafted of thick, heavy cloth. The folds and twists resembled a snowbank, and it settled across his shoulders as if it were a part of him. Almost immediately, snow began to dust over it, his grandmother's power attempting to bury anything it touched, as always. In spite of that, the snow and ice never seemed to soak through. He could feel the weight of it on his shoulders. It was _there_ , as always, but it was as if the cold couldn't reach him. "It's... it's so warm."

"Because it was made with love." Ariadne's arms slid around Zagreus in a tight squeeze. "It will always protect you, no matter how cold the rest of the world may seem, or how far from home you may go. The world might be a labyrinth, but with this, there will always be a way home."

 _She knew._ Zagreus swallowed. "Thank you. I— _thank you._."

Warm, callused fingertips brushed his cheek, flicking away a droplet of ice that had been a tear. She smiled, tears in her own eyes. "You are very welcome."


	3. The House of Hades: Preoccupation

The House's lounge was a dismal place for being a supposed site of merriment and relaxation. Shades who lingered there had little to say, except occasional lamentations for the mortal life lost to them or the circumstances that had resulted in their awaiting Lord Hades's attention. Their conversations played over in whispers that were only audible when one was nearly standing in them. Orpheus had, again, refused to play, and was locked away in a pit to consider his transgressions. The little gorgon who managed the place could occasionally be seen flitting about in a constant flurry, trying to keep up with her tasks. Mostly, though, it was empty. _Dead_ , one could even say.

Thanatos had always found it peaceful. He saw enough bustle whenever he had to visit the mortal realm, and the rest of the House was nearly as bad. The balcony overlooking the Styx bustled with shades fulfilling their duties in the administrative chambers, and the Great Hall was always lined with those waiting to plead their case. The garden was closed, and had been since he'd been small. The Queen's offices, and her private balcony, were unthinkable. In the House of Hades, only the lounge offered a moment of true respite.

It was, unfortunately, also _extremely_ visible.

"You have been preoccupied of late, my son."

He froze with his cup halfway to his lips. Mother Night waited several tables away near the door, hands folded before her and her expression patient. She didn't often offer unsolicited comments. When she did, it was best to pay attention. 

Not that it was a great mystery what had drawn her concern, this time. He finished the motion taking a sip, though he could hardly taste the wine. "Work has been busy. The mortals started another war, and the winter was hard again. Famine is having a festival, up there. Charon and I aren't enough on our own. We might need to find an intern."

"All true. Yet not, I think, the reason for your current unease." His mother stepped closer with a gliding motion that left it unclear if her feet were entirely grounded or not. Fine cloth billowed elegantly around her, caught in a constant breeze that touched nowhere else in the Underworld, and the stars that gleamed in her hair danced in it.

Thanatos turned his eyes back to his drink. She'd always been able to read him too well. Over the years he'd gotten good at not feeling, so there was nothing to read. Now...

Maybe that trick had run its course. "I have been doing my duty."

"And yet some aspect of that duty troubles you." A chair scraped against the floor across from him. He looked up just in time to see Nyx sit down. Or, mostly sit down. She was a little taller than she ought to have been, and was likely hovering. He didn't blame her. The seats weren't exactly cushioned. "You need not confide in me, but I hope you know that I would lend you my aid in carrying this burden, if you wish it." 

Just then, Thanatos would have given someone's arm to have the peace of the lounge broken. Anything to distract from the sensation of his mother's worried gaze on him. A bar fight, a raucous group of shades, a cracked cask spilling on the floor— _anything_ except for her patient presence across the table, waiting for him to gather his thoughts. Concern radiated off of her in gentle waves. It was everything he'd spent most of his life avoiding.

"There's..." He hunched his shoulders and slumped down in his seat. Childish, perhaps, but under his mother's gaze he felt very much like a child. "It's a mortal."

He didn't need to look her in the eye. He could feel her attention sharpen, though she stayed silent and allowed him time to choose his words with his usual care.

"I've run into him a few times up there. The first time it was—he saw me at work, and..." Thanatos gestured towards his eye. He'd only caught glimpses of it. Zag was adept at keeping his face turned so it stayed in shadow. Mortals were silly, superstitious things, and would surely shun him for it. No doubt that was why Thanatos usually saw him hunting or fishing for food. Always alone.

Still, one look had been all Thanatos needed. He knew his business, and had brought the good news more than a few people with eyes like that, the sclera darkened by some disease or condition. And, more than that, there was a feeling of recognition. "He'll be here soon, I think."

"Some mortals are particularly perceptive, most especially those who are near the end of their time." Nyx folded her hands before her, long, pale fingers laced together on the table. "Is that what troubles you? That you were seen?"

"Yes," he answered automatically. The word tasted incomplete on his lips, though, and he could tell by his mother's expression she sensed it too. "And... no. It's complicated."

He'd only been seen a few times. Those had been more than enough for the damage to have been done. Thanatos really wasn't sure which of them would suffer more for his mistakes in the end. The memory of Zag's touch burned, and the sheer animation in his face was impossible to shake off. It was never still. Always there was a smile, a scowl, a bitten lip—as if his mortal shell knew its time was short, and had every intention of wringing the most out of every moment it had left.

Difficult to think of yourself as bringing freedom when the cage was so clearly loved.

Zag would fight to keep the cell door closed, the walls up and the chains fastened. He'd resist with every bloody breath, even with when his body was wracked with pain and had no help left to give him. Death would win out. He always did. And then Zag would be shuffled off to await his fate. Maybe it would be Elysium, likely Asphodel. It didn't matter which; he'd never be under the sun again in either, and before long he would be another of the nameless, faceless masses that filled the Underworld. Thanatos knew that. He should have kept his distance.

_Why hadn't he kept his damned distance?_

Beyond the bitter echo of his thoughts, he heard himself say, "It's going to be a rough one." 

" _Oh_." As always, his mother heard what he hadn't said. She was perceptive like that. "Oh, my son. It would not be a kindness if you should refuse to collect him when the time comes. You know this."

Thanatos stared into his goblet of thin, weak pomegranate wine. He couldn't bear to meet her eyes. "I know."


	4. Greece: New Friends and Old

Zagreus leaned out the window and looked upward, fighting past the twisting sensation of falling upwards that Olympus seemed to carry around like an aura.

The mountain had a way of towering, even above itself. It soared above his grandmother's clouds, so the rising sun shone bright on lush greenery that wound about it in a holy wreath.There was no end to it, no peak to be seen. Merely a majesty of eternity in rock form. Temples of gleaming marble and eye-searing golden columns dotted the landscape, glowing under the brilliance of the unrestrained power of great-Uncle Helios. They were populated by no one and never put to any use, even on the nominal holy days that the gods gave a nod to. The buildings existed only as a monument to the importance of the mountain itself. All of the divinity was contained on the inside.

Looking down was worse than up, in many ways. The side of the holy anthill vanished into a tumble of gray, roiling clouds. It appeared as any mortal mount from its foot. Elegant and awe-inspiring, but there was no hint of its true heights until one passed the Gates and viewed it from within.

In theory, Zagreus could just walk outside, past the Horae and into the wilderness. Since he lived there, he had the right. It was, thus far, a theory untested. In all practicality, even if he managed to convince the Horae that he could go—unlikely—his grandmother would definitely be told that he'd gone, unescorted, into the realm of mortal. He'd be dragged back to Olympus by his ear in short order.

There'd never be a better time to go, though. Lord Zeus and Queen Hera were having another fight. Ares and Athena were both off overseeing a war—on opposing sides, of course. His grandmother had taken to her rooms as the earth warmed even through her clouds. Finally, Dionysus was holding a feast to honor the start of summer, which would keep almost all of the rest of the Olympians occupied, first with the event itself and then with the hangover. Only a few gods were unaccounted for, and they were no one who would think check on Zagreus's whereabouts.

He hefted the Endless Rope of Uknos and considered the window ledge. Hidden in his laurel, Aphrodite's gift pulsed, urging him onward.

If he couldn't walk out the front door, there were other ways down a mountain. 

* * *

"Ow," Zagreus groaned through a mouthful of cold mud. Other ways down a mountain, it turned out, included falling.

He wasn't entirely certain where he'd gone wrong, whether he hadn't tied the rope well enough, or if he hadn't chosen a heavy enough anchor. It had lasted most of the way, but towards the end there'd been nothing but a swift descent and a desperate effort to dodge various rocks, trees and other obstacles that would cheerfully have seen his way on to the Underworld with an express ticket.

One hand planted in the dirt. The second. His ribs tried to shift in alarming ways, and his breath came shorter than it should have. He strained upward, back arching and legs scrabbling at the mud to get a firm footing under him so he could regain both verticality and some vestige of dignity.

A gentle hand touched his shoulder and pulled. Zagreus rolled, landing flat on his back. A previously unnoticed bruise on his skull flared at even so mild a jostling, turning his vision turned white. It was only a moment, though, and then he was left looking up at the clouded sky.

Golden-skinned and kind, a woman in an elegant ivory peplos leaned over him, amusement causing the corners of her mouth to twitch. Her cheekbones could have been used as one of Ares's swords, they were so sharp, and her hair had been pinned in long, elegant black curls that twisted and flowed so it looked like a waterfall spilling over her shoulder. Flowers wove through her hair, pinned in place with studs of gold. Her face was young, but her smile added crinkles to the corners of her green eyes.

"Rest a moment. You knocked the wind out of yourself." Long, graceful fingers tapped the center of his chest. They were smudged with ink, spots of darkness that graced her index finger and a few knuckles like kisses from the Night. "We don't often see people coming down from Olympus in such a manner. It was quite the inspiration."

"Thanks. I think?" The words wheezed out of him, but she was right. The longer he just stayed put, the easier it was to breathe again. After a minute, he was even able to sit up, and her hand on his back was welcome but not necessary.

She ruffled his hair, and somehow managed to keep from aggravating his injuries. "Oh, no, thank _you_. The symbolism of it was exceptionally provocative. A man throwing himself from the heights of Olympus! It will make a magnificent central concept for my next work."

"Your next..." Zagreus squinted, trying to take in details while his head was still faintly ringing. "You're one of the Muses?"

"Calliope, yes. And you are Zagreus, the Lady Demeter's grandson, are you not? I've seen you out and about with the Lady Artemis, though we've not been introduced. She seldom pauses for art." The muse of epic poetry beamed and slid an arm around his ribs. "Up you get, little one. There's a stream where you can wash your wounds."

Zagreus allowed her to lever him to his feet. Then he just held on and staggered in the direction she pushed, for once in his life doing as he was told without complaint. Calliope hummed under her breath and was kind enough not to mention that she bore more of his weight than he did. The fact that he'd left a bloodstain on her clothes didn't seem to register with her at all.

As long as it didn't bother her, Zagreus refused to let it bother him. She was taking him, slowly, away from Olympus. That was all that mattered.

It hadn't felt like that far of a walk to the stream. A few hundred steps at most. But when they arrived Olympus had become distant on the horizon. The trees had changed, too. Bare branches and struggling new buds had given way to a real sort of summer splendor. Green leaves arched overhead, casting dappled shadows, and there was little sign of ice. Even the water was refreshingly cool rather than cold.

"The Fates must have their eye on you. That fall ought to have killed you, mortal or divine." Calliope eased him down onto a rock next to the bank, dipped the bottom hem of her gown into the waters and began to mop at his wounds. It exposed her legs all the way up to the midthigh.

Zagreus closed his eyes and tried to keep them that way. "Just what I need: attention from the Fates." In spite of himself, he leaned into Calliope's hands as she cleaned the blood from his brow. They were soft, and unexpectedly caring. It wasn't a familiar sensation.

Demeter was his grandmother, but she'd never been the gentle sort of parent. She set the rules, gave him guidance, used her power to protect him, but the others on Olympus had more often been the ones to ease his fears or hold him. Some were motherly—Hestia and Hera looked on him with a sort of fondness that he liked to think was maternal when it wasn't terrifying. Most of the others cared for him in ways that could never be considered conventional. He'd never forget the night he'd woken from a bad dream and Ares gave him a small dagger. _To do battle with the nightmares, should they dare return,_ he'd said. Zagreus still kept it with him. The blade was barely large enough peel an apple, but it had been large enough that he'd slept well afterward.

Calliope's thoughtful touch had moved to his back, which must have been stained red from how it felt. No few sticks had found their way into his flesh. She pulled them out gingerly, hissing and patting at each wound as it was cleansed. Zagreus gritted his teeth, and desperately sought something to take his mind from the pain.

"So... you write poetry." Cold water slid between his shoulder blades, followed by the grind of gravel being brushed from a wound. Zagreus hissed and tried not to flincg. "Does that mean when you said this is going to be a 'central concept'..."

"Oh yes, I expect I can find an entire poem in just these few moments," she chirped, disregarding his steadily sinking shoulders. Her hands wrapped around his elbow and twisted until something _popped_. Under his choked grunts of pain, Zagreus heard, "Possibly several. It's a very rich metaphor."

"Oh. That's..." He flexed his elbow. Sore, but still mobile. "Nice."

"Mmhm, isn't it though? But I suspect that whatever reason had you falling will make for a much better work." Her green eyes locked on him knowingly. "A tale for legends, perhaps?"

Zagreus considered that possibility. Then he considered his injuries. It wasn't exactly an auspicious start. "It might be more Thalia's sort of thing." 

"Fortunate that we often collaborate, isn't it? Do not discount comedy, young man. The depths of emotion are only made deeper when set next to its heights." She finished wiping at the last still-bleeding wound and knelt to rinse the bit of cloth she'd been using. The water ran pink around it.

He winced as he saw how much blood wasn't coming out. The fabric was probably ruined. Calliope didn't seem to care, though. She kept working at it until the water was clear again, then twisted it dry. As soon as she let go, the fabric smoothed from its damp crinkles, and the stains faded into a gentle pink tint that matched the flowers in her hair.

_Muse. Right._

"So... um, I don't suppose I could convince you to keep quiet about seeing me, could I?" He folded his legs and arms together in an attempt to look as adorably hopeful as he could. It had worked on Queen Hera, once or twice. "You know, as a favor?"

Calliope, it seemed, was made of sterner stuff than the Queen of the Gods. She cocked one magnificently arched eyebrow and stared at him in mild amusement and a smile sharp as any spear. "As a favor, no. But perhaps in trade. I assume you intend to return to Olympus one day?"

Zagreus nodded. Technically it was true. If everything went well, he'd be coming back. I fit didn't go well... He'd figure it out when he got there. "Yeah."

The way she looked at him made him think she could read his mind. "Then, in exchange for my discretion, you will see to it that I am the first of my sisters to hear your tale directly from your lips. You will tell no one before me." Her nose wrinkled. " _Especially_ Euterpe."

She held out her hand.

The Muse of Epic Poetry demanding first-option rights to whatever came out of his quest. What could possibly go wrong?

Zagreus slapped his hand into hers and shook. "Deal."

* * *

Greece was as beautiful as it was unsurprisingly dangerous. Zagreus traveled as quickly as he could, crossing miles in minutes on icy feet, but he still found himself tangling with wildlife and dangerous terrain enough that it slowed him down. Within the first few hours of his journey he was bitten by a raccoon and very nearly broke his neck when a patch of seemingly-sturdy ground had turned out to be more seemingly than sturdy.

At least he knew where to go. The Gates to the Underworld were east to the coast and then south from there. Keep moving, don't slow down, don't be seen by mortals. That was all he had to do. Even for Zagreus it should have been easy.

Inevitably, though, dusk threatened, and choices had to be made. Every fiber of him cried out that the longer he lingered out in the realm of mortals, the sooner he'd be found and his journey brought to an end. However, all of his experience outside the hallowed slopes of Olympus informed him that was foolish, and that no matter how well he could see through the darkness there were creatures with fangs and claws that were simply waiting for a taste of questionably-immortal flesh.

Survival won by a thread.

He found a hill with a hollowed out section. It wasn't quite steep enough to form a cave, but it covered two out of four approaches. The next step was brush. Fortunately, there was plenty to choose from. Hard winters and weak summers left wild foliage withered and easy to collect. He finished blocking off his little nest just as the sun set behind the clouds.

Pleased with his work, Zagreus settled with his back to the hill to watch the last glow of the sun fade away on the horizon. The sword he'd— _ahem_ —borrowed from Lord Ares rested across his knees, ready to take on any who would try him. Safely ensconced in his hideaway, tucked behind tangled walls of dead limbs and wilted bushes, he was certain no wandering mortal or god would accidentally stumble into him, and any wild life that approached would certainly be put off by the crackle and thorns of the thicket.

As usual, he was wrong.

"There you are!"

Zagreus groaned and followed the sound of the voice, looking upward at the crescent moon that was peeking through a break in the clouds. Artemis perched on it easily as if it were a tree branch. Her bow and quiver dangled at her side, their shapes formed of cloudy shadow and hints of starlight. Her face paint blended her in with the night sky, and her hair shimmered green like the lights that sometimes danced in the north. Still, once she'd spoken, there was no mistaking her.

Little good his sword would do him against the Goddess of the Hunt, even if he could bear to use it against a friend. "Good evening, Cousin. Come to enjoy the night air?"

Artemis was as bad at sarcasm as Zagreus had ever been with subtlety. "Looking for you, rather." She hopped down, taking physical form in thick, dried bramble and brush without so much as a single snapped twig. "Your grandmother is furious, you know. Father, too."

He winced. "Lord Uncle Zeus, too?"

"Oh yes. It's all ice storms and lightning on Olympus right now. All the game's gone into hiding."

That hadn't been in his plans. He'd always gotten along pretty well with his uncle. Zeus had encouraged Zagreus's lessons with Ares and Athena, had browbeaten Demeter into allowing the hunting trips with Artemis. There'd been a few disappointments, especially when Queen Hera had put her foot down over lightning in the halls, but overall they'd done well together. He'd counted on Zeus being one of the ones encouraging his grandmother to let Zagreus be.

Why on Olympus would _Zeus_ care if he left?

While he was caught up in his thoughts, Artemis settled next to Zagreus and folded her legs neatly. The space seemed to alter around them, becoming less of a ramshackle shelter and more of a hunting blind. In her element, she was barely a shadow. "Do you want to talk about it?"

 _No._ "I'm not going back."

She scoffed and bumped her shoulder into his. Her smile gleamed. Artemis didn't smile much, so it must have been an honest one. " _Obviously_. You wouldn't have run away for no reason. I just thought you might want to talk about it."

That brought him up short. "So you're not going to... hit me over the head or something?"

"Why would I? There's nothing in there to damage." Artemis just cocked her head and folded her hands, patient as always. One of the few who were. "You know your quarry. I just want to hear what it is."

Relief washed through him, surprisingly strong. He hadn't realized how nervous he'd been, worried about her approval. He ought to have known better. Of everyone on Olympus, of course Artemis would know what it was like not to fit in, and to need space to find her own way. She'd always been first to give him that, when he needed it. If Demeter or Zeus got angry at her for it, she'd just do what she always did and go hunting until they calmed down. 

Once he thought about it like that, it didn't feel so bad to have been caught. He still had to go it alone, but that didn't mean there weren't people he could rely on. "I'm going to find my mother."

Silence formed its own answer.

"I have to do it. Grandmother—she's killing people." He swallowed and turned his face toward the sky. Artemis wasn't the only god who could come from above. Now he knew to be more careful. "Dionysus was able to save Ariadne. She's immortal now. If he can do it, surely I can bring back my mother, and stop this long winter from doing any more harm." 

He felt a soft shift of movement by his side, a brush of fur and leather against his skin. Then a hesitant hand landed on his knee. "You don't have to do this, Zagreus. You don't know what Hades is like. The Underworld isn't as simple to get into and out of as it used to be. And..." Confusion made the word drag, as if she couldn't believe she needed to say what she was about to. "They're just mortals, you know. They die all the time, for worse reasons than being a little cold."

"They're still people."

If Artemis had any reply to that, she kept it to herself.

They sat together through the night, watching the clouds break, then drift back to cover the stars and moon again. Lightning flashed in the distance, and a cold breeze followed in its wake. When it did, the brambles closed around them without so much as a whispered request, hiding them from the wrath of Olympus.

Dawn arrived in due time, as it had a habit of doing. It seeped through the cloud cover, slowly lightning the world from blackness into shades of gray. Together they watched as the song birds woke, and the trees seemed to stretch their limbs toward the weakened sunlight.

At his side, Artemis sighed heavily and turned to him. "Well, if you're going to do this, you may as well do it right."

She shoved his cloak back from his shoulders without even disturbing the snow that dusted it. Delicately as she might test the ground for tracks, she plucked a small handful of leaves from the air and began to lace them through his pauldrons. As soon as they touched his armor they withered from bright green to autumn red. It didn't seem to bother her, because she kept at it, until he was covered from one shoulder to the next. "This will help you hide. You're terrible at it, you know. With these, they'll have to set eyes on you out in the open if they want to get in a shot."

Zagreus bit his lip. The beautiful cloak Ariadne had gifted him sat heavy on his back, warm even with the icy winds of his grandmother's wrath seeking him. Hidden away in his hair, Aphrodite's gift hummed a bright song, urging him eastward. 

And there was Artemis, offering another boon to help him on his way. "Thank you."

A wobble of her lower lip kept Artemis's smile from being complete. "You just make sure you don't get stuck down there, alright? Or we'll all have to come after you, and I don't like to think of how that would go."

He gripped her shoulders in the brief, aborted hug they'd always kept themselves to. "I wouldn't dream of it."

* * *

Snow crunched underfoot as Zagreus stepped onto the grounds of the fallen temple.

The Temple of Styx wasn't what he expected. From the outside, it was nothing more than ruins. Broken columns and pieces of abandoned building littered the area. For some reason, his grandmother's touch had stayed strong there, coating everything in a thick layer of snow and ice as if winter had never left. The steps leading up to the doors had crumbled, become a smooth slope of rubble and ice. Encircling the grounds was the water of the river that, supposedly, ran all the way through the Underworld. It flowed still and peaceful, with barely even a splash along the banks. An easy boat ride, if a boat should present itself. It was nothing like the blood red waters that he'd heard about.

Not to say that he'd heard much. Lady Demeter had no time for the self-made outcast Lord Hades or his realm. It upset her to hear about, and so it went unspoken. Few of those on Olympus cared enough to try her patience on the topic. Death, after all, was for mortals. Once they passed beyond the reach of Olympus, they became someone else's problem.

That the ranks of _someone else's problem_ happened to include his mother never seemed to occur to any of them.

Zagreus hadn't be sure, really sure, that Aphrodite's gift would lead him to it. He'd hoped, but it had seemed like such an impossibility. Love seemed like such a fragile thing to rely on. But there it was, more real than the heights of Olympus. It hadn't been what Aphrodite intended her gift to be used for. When he closed his eyes, a vision of long fingers wrapped around his as they hauled on a fishing line together still haunted him. No doubt she'd expected him to do something foolish, like track Than down and drag him off to a sunny glen.

There'd be time for that later. Probably. Hopefully. All he had to do was survive.

Cautious, light-footed as he'd ever been, Zagreus walked through the clearing. No hordes of the deceased leaped from the waters to drag him down. No traps sprang, or rocks tumbled. There was only the sound of ice and snow underfoot as, step by step, he made his way through the miraculously still-standing temple doors.

The darkness that assailed his eyes when he passed the shadow of the temple doors was oddly peaceful. Comfortable, warm, in a way it never had been on Olympus. A faint hint of old incense filled his lungs, anchored his feet to the floor. The air was still and dusty, but fresh enough. He wasn't going to suffocate from noxious fumes, at least. Instead of silence, the air was rich with the constant click and grind of some sort of mechanical device, going about its eternal business untroubled by a foreign presence in its midst. Fur from some massive beast lay scattered about in great tufts. Some of it had been there so long that dust had settled over it.

Inside the temple presented a totally different face from without. What appeared destroyed outside still stood proud and strong from within, if unfinished. The blue waters of the river faded into the crimson he'd been expecting, its roiling bubbles thick and foamy against its banks. Artistically placed tiles on the floor formed ominous patterns of bone, skulls and, oddly, dogs.

"Well this isn't so bad. Thought for sure something would have tried to kill me by now." He craned his neck, taking in the towering columns and, off to the side, oddly grilled tunnels. More like prisons than anything else. "I wonder what's in those..."

Something caught his eye as he passed, a glimmer of purple that was out of place amidst the crimson and shadows. Zagreus paused mid-step, then cautiously backed up to take a better look. Off to the left, in an easily missed nook, someone had set up a river market of all things.

Close to the front, gleaming balls of light floated on small pedestals, divinity radiating out from them like a song. Blessings of some sort, clearly, though it was startling to see them for sale. He made certain to stay far away from those as he browsed the wares. The last thing he needed was to be found by his family when he was just getting started.

In any case, there were plenty of other things to look at. A fruit stall was piled high with pomegranates— _pomegranates?_ —and another contained a set of black, beating hearts, veined through with red as though blood still flowed within them. Jewels and fine fabrics were tumbled together in a heap at the back, utterly ignored as if they were practically worthless and hardly even on offer.

And there in the corner next to a docked barge stood the proprietor. His hat was pulled down, hiding most of his face in shadow. What could be seen of it was gaunt, nearly skeletal. A wisp of purple smoke escaped every time he let out a rasping breath. Obols ringed his neck and shoulders in an obscene display of wealth.

The weight of Zagreus's empty pockets couldn't have been heavier.

"Hello, mate, you must be Charon. My names Zagreus, it's a pleasure." He edged in close and eyed the empty boat. He would have thought the ferryman himself would have better things to do with his time than play at shopkeep, but what did Zagreus know? Maybe all that money from the dead didn't cover boat repairs. From everything he'd heard of Lord Hades, it wouldn't surprise him if he made his underlings pay for their own equipment. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to let me hitch a ride, would you?"

" _Hnnnnnuuuuugh._ " Charon held out his open palm, pointedly. One glowing eye peeked out from under his broad-brimmed hat. It gleamed with promised malevolence. " _Graaaaahhh krruuuuhn hhrrrrrrmmm_."

Zagreus backed up hastily as he could, both palms up and out. "Right, right, of course—got to pay the fare, what was I thinking? I'll just—go see about that. Right? Right. Good talk."

Charon's head didn't turn, but Zagreus could feel those eyes on him as he trudged away, as if he might find some way to hide under a bench and cop a free trip somehow. The sensation was positively chilling, in a way that even his grandmother's best work never had been. That only reached the bone. Charon's gaze reached the _soul_.

Well, it had been a long shot anyway. He'd just have to walk it.

* * *

Two rooms later and Plan Beta, too, was revised.

"That explains where all the fur came from." Zagreus crossed his arms and considered the behemoth of a hound before him. Its bulk was so massive that it entirely blocked the passage even though the bridge would have been easily wide enough for two or even three chariots to pass simultaneously. If someone wanted to get by, they'd have to squeeze up against the wall. At their peril, of course. All it would take was one shift sideways and they'd be in the river. Or flatbread. "I forgot about you."

Cerberus, the three-headed guardian of the gates of hell, stared back at him through all six of its eyes. Two of its expressions were alert and serious, ears perked and teeth bared to varying degrees. A deep intellect rested in those glowing green eyes. This, indeed, was a guardian who could be trusted to bar the path.

The third head panted cheerfully in his direction. Zagreus was pretty sure he could see the torch light shining through its ears when it turned to snuffle the middle. Patience radiated out from the central head, as if it were used to such indignities and knew it had no escape.

"Hey there, boy. Boys? I really hope I don't have to fight you." He held out his hand as far as he could and edged into the monster's range. If Cerberus wanted, the hound could probably swallow him in a single bite. He might make it three just for the sake of sharing, but it would be at the hound's discretion. Either way, Zagreus wasn't certain of victory. He'd trained for combat under Lord Ares and Lady Athena, but that was for war. Not _this_.

The nicer of the heads leaned forward and sniffed at his palm while the other two kept their killer-instinct eyes locked on Zagreus. He could almost feel their thoughts pondering the crunch of his bones, how his blood would splatter across the tile, the way—

_Sluuuuuurp._

The way a giant tongue would suffocate him.

Zagreus went down in a heap. A single paw the size of a shield pressed down on his chest. Somehow, massive as he was, Cerberus managed to be careful with his weight and only pushed hard enough to keep Zagreus pinned as he was covered from knees to forehead in foul-smelling spittle. Shards of bone and rotting meat were caught between massive, razor-sharp fangs. There was no telling where the meat came from, but it was also hard to be quite as terrified as he suspected he should have been with those adoring eyes locked in him.

Gasping for air, he reached up to rub at Cerberus's muzzle, using it to buy some space to breathe. His nails dug in to get a really good scratch going. No worries about doing damage there; the skin under all that fur was tough as well-cured leather. Cerberus leaned into the scratches, his hind leg thumping in ecstasy.

The other two heads looked mildly scandalized.

"You like that boy?" Zagreus smiled and scratched harder. Olympus had dogs. It had a lot of animals, actually: peacocks, eagles, owls, swans, pigs, bulls... But divine beasts usually had some sort of refinement and dignity. It made them hard to get attached to. There was none of that with Cerberus. At least, not with a third of Cerberus. "We're friends now, yeah?"

His answer came by way of another slurp and a happy whine. It was hard to see around the bulk of the body, but Zagreus was fairly certain there was a wagging tail back there somewhere. He had a feeling that if there hadn't been two other heads deciding matters, he would have had a lap full of two-ton, wiggling puppy.

Crushed by cuddles before he'd even breached the Underworld. Well, there were worse ways to go.

He rubbed hard between the beast's two enormous brow ridges. "So you're going to let me through, right?" Zagreus asked hopefully. "Because I kind of need to get passed. I know this is your job and all, but..."

The whine turned sad. Regretful, and the two other heads growled. Cerberus sat up and re-centered himself on the path.

Zagreus could sometimes take a hint. "That's a no, huh?" The third head still seemed amenable to pets, so he stretched to do some more scratching. Every time he moved even slightly one way or the other, the more alert two growled in threat. It didn't matter. He wasn't dumb enough to try and take on the dreaded guardian of hell.

Especially when said guardian was such a good boy.

"Alright, alright. I'll just have to find another way." He gave Cerberus one last rub. As much as he would have liked to linger there and keep petting his new friend, there was no telling when or if something more aggressive might come by. At least with Cerberus he knew he wasn't directly in danger.

Maybe those barred tunnels he saw would hold the key. A secret passage, some sort of magical device. Even a couple of coins would do. He'd take just about anything he could get.

* * *

" _Satyrs_ —" Zagreus groaned as he pulled himself out of the faintly glowing green basin of hopefully-water he'd been tossed into by a small roof collapse. Filthy and disgusting as it looked, the liquid soothed the twisting nausea of the poison that had been pumping through his veins. It would have been nice to know about that several rooms prior, but how had he known to trust random buckets of phosphorescent liquid in this place? It wasn't as if it had a sign of some sort over it reading **_Cure._**

Muttering under his breath, Zagreus yanked the satyr's poison darts out of his skin. Nasty, barbed things that they were, they hurt even more on the way out than in. Ichor oozed out along with the blood. Even nullified by whatever was in the basin, it still reeked like rotting things.

Around him, the dismembered remnants of the satyrs who'd ambushed him still twitched in their death throes. The tunnel was rough, carved out of dirt more than rock. A few pieces of art decorated them in a few places, mostly of a certain three-headed good boy, but overall they were rough. Whatever had originally been planned, the satyrs had taken them over early enough that the walls hadn't even been smoothed. 

Satyrs weren't all of it, either. There'd been some sort of crystal snake thing that shot lines of fire, and evil little urns that tried to blow him up. The worst had been the vermin. Large ones, he could deal with, even when their disgusting puddles of blood turned out to be as poisonous as the satyr darts. The tiny vermin, though...

He'd barely escaped with his life. Even now he could hear its roar of triumph rumbling underfoot.

Zagreus staggered out of the last pit and collapsed against a column. The tunnels were clearly out of the question. They were a warren. He couldn't honestly swear that he'd covered enough ground to be certain that there _wasn't_ some sort of secret entrance to the Underworld hidden in their depths. What he could be certain about was that if he kept trying, he was definitely going to die without so much as an obol to his name. Best case scenario, he would turn out to be immortal after all and would have to pull himself back together, which could take actual ages. Then again, he might not be, and he'd end up trapped on the banks of the Styx for all eternity while his grandmother froze mortals in their beds and Artemis led a war against the Underworld for him.

No. That definitely wasn't an option. Never.

But one thought led to another, and another. He eyed the swift-flowing waters of the Styx thoughtfully. Where it turned red, hints of ghosts could be seen in it, flickers of eyes and horrified faces. Hands reached out, grasping for freedom before they were pulled back under again. One of them waved.

Being trapped on the riverbank wasn't necessarily the only choice, merely the obvious one.

Everyone knew that the Styx ran all the way from the realm of the living to the depths of Tartarus. Sure, it was an immensely powerful cosmic force both metaphorically and literally dividing the worlds of the living and the dead, but Zagreus was a pretty good swimmer. All he had to do was make it down to Elysium. Once he'd found his mother, they could figure out a way to get back out.

He leaned over the edge of the river bank. It looked deep. Swift, but not terribly so. Surely—

A breeze ruffled Zagreus's hair. "Hey, boss, you look like you were just about to make a bad decision! We'll have none of that!"

Golden wings gleamed in the corner of his eye and suddenly there he was: Hermes. He hovered midair, held up by his winged sandals. The satchel over his shoulder looked lighter than usual and, when Zagreus looked across the way, he saw a bevy of half-transparent shades milling about while Charon chivvied them into an orderly queue.

 _Oh, icicles._ He smiled, innocently, as if he hadn't just been contemplating a swim. "Good afternoon, Lord Hermes. What brings you here?"

Hermes fluttered around, as if even holding still long enough for small talk was too much. Dark curls ruffled in a wind entirely of his own making. "Oh, you know, just doing my job and a few other things besides. Search and rescue, you know how it is."

Zagreus winced. "Yeah, I... have an idea."

More fluttering. A feather made of light drifted down and vanished before it hit the floor. For some reason Hermes was smiling. It was broad, and knowing, and made Zagreus's stomach churn. "My professional associate over there, he says you tried to get a ride but you didn't have the cash?"

If he weren't frozen, Zagreus would have melted in embarrassment. He shifted awkwardly from foot to foot and tried to scoff. "Why would I need a ride from Charon? It's not like I'm dead, and you'd have to be mad to do something like try to break into Elysium or..." The longer he spoke, the more the words faded into a heartfelt mumble of lies. Zagreus stared down at his blue-tinged bare feet. "Search and rescue, huh?"

Hermes was one of the better gods. As far as Zagreus knew, he'd never started fights for giggles (Eris), didn't show up with scrolls on tactics because he _happened_ to hear that someone had an afternoon free (Athena), didn't spread rumors (Pheme) about other people's rampant infidelity (Zeus). Hermes just did his job without fail. If his job was to find Zagreus and bring him back...

An obol struck Zagreus between the eyes.

He fumbled to grab it before it hit the riverbank and was lost to the Styx. He ended up leaning too far out over the open water, barely balanced above a damp oblivion, hands slapped together and the cold, hard reality of the coin biting into his palms. 

"Tip for you, Coz, cause you've always done right by me and I think you could use word of advice." Hermes slid into view in front of Zagreus and gently helped nudge him upright, back and away from the water. "You start a job, you finish it, no matter what it takes. Got that? Good. Now, I've got some errands to run on the other side of the world, so I'll be seeing you. Or not, as the case may be."

In a flash of white cloth and golden feathers, Hermes was gone.

Across the way, Charon had finished loading up his boat with the shades of the mortal departed. He stood by the docks and stared across the way at Zagreus, oar in one hand. The other he held outstretched and open, palm up.


	5. The House of Hades: Preparation

Thanatos dropped to his feet when he felt it.

The world rippled like a rock dropped into a still pond, sending out waves that crashed into everything in their path, sent drifting debris and insects sent spinning off their paths. He felt _himself_ move too, as if he were only a leaf on that same pond. All of existence swirled around him, choppy and broken as it had never been. Suddenly, he needed nothing more than to return home.

The shade of the elderly woman he was there to collect looked at him, curiosity bright in her translucent eyes. "Are you all right, child?" She didn't seem to care about her own body laid at her feet, but, in his experience, the older ones often didn't. Being free of the pains that they'd collected over a lifetime was enough.

"Fine." He shook his head and bent to finish his work, bringing his sword around to snip off a lock of hair with practiced ease. The air shivered, and the last ties that bound her to the world above faded away. When he had time he'd deliver it to the Styx. For now, he tucked it into his belt and took up her the old woman's arm. With the cut, she'd grown more solid. Free. "I apologize, grandmother, but we don't have time to linger today." 

"Yes, I think I can see that." Sunlight filtered through the ever-present, thick clouds, making her seem even less substantial than most, but her grip on him was tight. A butterfly flitted through them to land on the corpse, its wings shimmering with brilliant color. Her head twisted to watch as someone came running from a far field, no doubt having seen her fall. "We both have appointments to keep."

They vanished before the woman—a daughter? Granddaughter?—was close enough to see what had happened. Thanatos hated that. Usually he tried to give the freshly departed a moment to come to terms with their changed circumstances, especially if there was someone there with them. It made it easier for everyone if they had a moment to metaphorically breathe. This time he whisked her away before the tears could even begin, dropping her in the welcoming darkness of Erebus and then immediately vanishing again without even a goodbye.

The House called, loud as a scream. It had been his refuge for as long as he'd existed, and Thanatos raced for it through the very threads of the cosmos.

He arrived at his usual place in the West Hall, on the balcony overlooking the Styx. It was exactly as he left it and, strangely, that failed to set his heart at ease. Spirits flowed in the depths of the river, twisting and writhing, golden glimmers as they traveled from their usual places to arise from the Pool. Administrative shades passed returned from their breaks without more than a glance in his direction. Achilles stood guard, ever-vigilant, keeping the overly curious from their Lord's private chambers.

Thanatos drifted through the House feeling like a ghost himself. It was immaculate, as always, and Dusa was hard at work dusting to keep it so. A convoluted line of shades stretched down the Great Hall, milling about aimlessly as they meandered their way forward. Lord Hades held court, listening impatiently as his underlings laid out whatever wrongs they imagined had been done to them and demanded he, somehow, set it right. The Queen bowed her head with the contractors, laying out some sort of plan that took up an entire table and had the contractors looking greedily excited. Hypnos snored over his check-in list, so unaffected he hadn't even woken from his nap.

It was a scene that Thanatos had witnessed innumerable times. Business as usual. And yet, it was... off. It was a song sung in the wrong key, or played by the wrong instrument.

That there was no outward sign of it didn't matter. He could feel it in his bones, a restlessness not entirely unlike what guided him to a mortal when their time had come to an end. It left the same itch along his fingers, the same guiding pull, but different somehow. Sweeter. Whatever had changed, it felt as if, rather than the slow end of a heartbeat that generally filled the house, it might be about to speed instead.

Even the passing fancy of such a thing turned his thoughts to Zag, always to Zag. As if eternity had enough time for such things. He could only imagine what his Master would say of such distraction.

_Save the daydreams for those who dream._

His mother waited by the Queen's offices, near the center of the Underworld. She met his eyes solemnly, and some of the strangeness eased. Someone, at least, was as on-guard as he was. "You felt it as well, then."

Certainty took a blow as Lady Nyx cast him a sharp look and then shook her head. "No. Nothing so simple." Her hands clasped before her, small sparks of darkness dancing across her fingertips. "Your sisters have... taken an interest. Their eyes have fallen upon us, and they were kind enough to give me forewarning."

His eyebrows rose. "Forewarning of what sort?"

"I do not know."

Thanatos turned that over. It wasn't often that the Fates were interested in the effect their designs had on the Underworld. With rare exceptions, the weave ended where the Styx began, and what happened to mortals after they had had played their part was of little interest to those who wrote the story. Even his own place was minuscule; his work laid on the border and edge, one last line before a thread was cut, only of interest to those near it.

It was alarming to think that he and his may have been moved to a more central place in the great work.

"You would know if any of the previous offenders had been contacted or removed. If something has changed." He spoke with as little inflection as he could, so as to not risk accusing the Night of anything nefarious. But he needed to know, and of all those in existence, she was perhaps the only one who could answer.

His mother hesitated. Her eyes lowered away from his, and shadows curled around her as if to mimic the veil she once wore. "I should have. And yet, _I_ did not."

" _You_ did not? But I..." The words drifted away, thought left incomplete. His fingers tapped an anxious rhythm on the hilt of his sword. It was a nervous sort of energy that took him, unfamiliar at its base. He didn't know what to do with it, with the need to take action and yet no sign of what action needed to be taken. It could drive someone mad.

"You." A cool hand came to rest on his elbow, then slid down his arm to still his hand. "Bide here a while, my son. Whatever comes will come, and you will be ready."

"Will I?"

She smiled like the stars peeking out from behind heavy clouds. "You always are."


	6. Elysium: Served Cold

The trip down the Styx was, for the most part, peaceful. Charon knew his work, and didn't run the craft into any unexpected rocks or lead it towards a surprise shallow. A palpable tension hung in the air as the shades looked around at what would be their home for the rest of eternity. A few huddled together, murmuring in echoing voices that he could barely hear above the creaking of the barge. Some others stayed apart, stiff, staring directly ahead as if already looking eternity in the eye and finding they didn't enjoy the view. None of them seemed to mind the presence of a living person among them. 

They did tend to look askance when Zagreus high-fived some of the hands reaching out from the water. That wasn't his problem, though.

Charon brought them to a gentle stop at a small, paved outcropping. It led into a luxurious meadow, where spectral purple butterflies fluttered from flower to flower and towering statues of heroic figures loomed overhead. Peaceful shades wandered almost idly, as if lost in their own thoughts.

Elysium.

The boatman's head turned. Obols jangled on his hat as those glowing purple eyes locked on Zagreus. He gestured towards the field.

" _Mrrrrnnnngh._ "

"Must be my stop." Zagreus hopped off the bench and towards the dock. He paused to grip Charon's shoulder on the way. "Thanks for the ride, mate. I know you usually don't do this for just anyone."

" _Nrrrrghh.... Graaaaahhhh haaaaaarrrrrrnnn wrrrrrgh._ "

"The very next time I see him." One last pat and then Zagreus hopped onto dry land. At least one of the shades he'd been riding with eyed the shore as if they might make a leap for it. Charon snapped out his oar with a crack like a whip, barring the way. Unsurprisingly, the tempted found themselves inclined to restraint after that.

Ariadne had said that she'd had to be taken all the way past Tartarus, to a dark abyss filled with the newly dead where a panel of nameless judges decided her worth—and the eternal resting place of her soul. Judging by the way the newly dead stared longingly at the shore, Zagreus wondered if Cretan Princesses might have seen the better end of the process. 

However it was handled, it wasn't his concern. He looked around the rolling, gentle fields, with their lush grass and soft illumination shining in from somewhere above. The waters of the River Lethe misted delicately, casting subdued rainbows where it crossed the beams of light. Really, if one had to pick a single spot to spend eternity, Elysium wouldn't have been a bad choice.

Adjusting his cloak around his shoulders, Zagreus picked out one of the clusters of people and headed in their direction. "Excuse me, good shades, I was wondering if you could help me locate someone..."

The flickering ghosts of what had once been mortals shifted about. Most of them were identical, or nearly so. Soft wisps drifted off them, making them seem even more insubstantial than they already were. Their shoulders were draped over with heavy cloth that concealed all but the most generic details of their forms. Shapeless, broad-brimmed hats cast shadows over their faces even when they stood directly in one of the steams of light. Here and there he saw a hint of a beard or the gleam of a smile peeking out. That was all.

Their faces, or the place where he assumed their faces were, angled in his direction.

Zagreus shivered. _Creepy._ He bit his tongue, though. It wasn't the deads' fault that they looked that way, and it would have been rude to comment. "Good afternoon—or evening by now, it's been... Ahem. None of your concern, I suppose." They kept floating there, bobbling aimlessly as if stirred by a nonexistent breeze. He tried to find an eye to meet. "I'm looking for a woman: golden hair, green eyes like mine—well, like one of them, anyway. Bit of divine blood in her, not sure if that helps. She died some time ago, but I'm certain she's around here somewhere."

They stared.

He stared back.

Slowly, one of them shook their head. A whisper of barely audible words echoed through his ears. "We know not who you seek, living one."

"Really?" Annoyance had Zagreus's hand tighten around the blade at his hip. What use, though? They were already dead. "No one comes to mind? No one at all?"

Another slow negative. As one, the shades turned away to stare aimlessly at a the giant stone toe of some forgotten hero. Or he assumed they were staring at it. For all he knew their eyes might have been closed. What he could tell was that he'd been dismissed.

"Alright, thank you for your time... I suppose." Zagreus bit back and huff and walked away. He ought to have known it wouldn't be that easy. He'd turn the place over top to bottom, if that was what it took. There had to be answers _somewhere_.

* * *

"You will not find the answers you seek by asking these shades, stranger."

Zagreus groaned. He was slumped back against one of the decorative columns that stood in—poorly—for landmarks. His feet dangled over the air, just above the pale waters of the river. Condensation collected on his skin, slipping down to freeze as small pebbles of ice, which was frankly bizarre. Usually water froze as soon as it touched his feet, but the air in Elysium was so warm it must have been able to resist. Even stranger, the odd light of from above made his usually blue-white toes appear more flesh colored than usual, which was fascinating enough that he didn't feel awkward staring at his own feet.

And he had to stare at his own feet. There wasn't anywhere else to look that wasn't incredibly awkward. "They haven't been very helpful, I'll give you that much. I'm not sure I understand why. It's not a very hard question, but the way they answer it you'd think they'd never seen anyone in their afterlives."

To his left rested one of the few... well, _person-like_ shades he'd seen around Elysium. He was a tall man by anyone's standards, not just from Zagreus's less-than-towering perspective, with deep brown skin and even darker hair and beard. His cloak was a similar color to the field he lounged in, such a soft green it blended in without needing to be transparent. Under his cloak he wore the armor of a Myrmidon, and the laurel of a victor.

Armor and laurel, but not the pride. For all that he was in exalted Elysium, the shade would not lift his head to meet Zagreus's eyes. Instead, his gaze stayed low, and his shoulders slumped. He stared down into the mists, as if seeking something in their depths.

After a silence that stretched long enough for Zagreus to notice that his ankles were _extremely_ bony, the shade answered, "Any question is difficult for those who have drunk deep of the Lethe."

Zagreus bolted upright. His ankles lost their power to distract. "So they've forgotten everything? Even things that have happened here? I thought Elysium was a paradise for mortals, but that... that sounds _awful_."

"The gift of forgetfulness is not selective." The Myrmidon stirred, leaning forward. His hand stretched out, fingertips just brushing above the flowing waters. Clouds wrapped around them, reaching up as if to grasp his hand. Just before he touched the water itself, he flinched away. "For many, oblivion is the only way to make eternity in this place bearable. Parted from kin, with no hope for future glory and only endless sharpening of skills they will never again need... What else can they do but drink, again and again, every time the gift wanes and despair seeks to claim them once more?"

There was something there. Zagreus couldn't put his finger on it, but he could feel words lingering unspoken in the air. His eyes skimmed over the hunched form and bowed head of the dead man, so utterly unlike the others Zagreus had attempted to speak with. "If forgetfulness is so necessary to existence here, may I ask why you have not partaken of it yourself, sir?"

Surprisingly, the shade smiled. It was a broken, heart-wrenching expression, as far away from happiness as the gods might be from mortals, and as mortals might be from worms. "Let us say only that I fear the peace of oblivion far more than the pain of memory." 

The words were soft, as any shade's were, and contained the same hollow echo. Unlike all the others he'd spoken with, they carried emotion the way Poseidon's seas carried the storm.

"And you think she—" Zagreus swallowed an unexpected lump in his throat. "You think my mother may have made a different choice from your own?"

The Lonely Myrmidon shook his head. He'd leaned away from the water and had begun to pluck at the grass, weaving and folding into small rings. As soon as he let them go, they faded away into the light rather than lingering. "She may very well be among them, name and form lost. If so, you should leave her to her rest. It does no good to chase that which has left you behind."

His mother had always been a distant figure to him. Grandmother seldom spoke of her, other than when her emotions were high and her wrath was about to be brought down. Lord Uncle Zeus had once told him of her anger when a belated frost had ruined the new buds in her garden, and the way the fight between mother and daughter had carried on for weeks. The shades Zagreus had encountered were dull, wretched things. They barely spoke, and when they did their voices were unidentifiable from one to another. It was hard to think of a woman who had gone toe to toe with Lady Demeter as one of them.

"I'll find her anyway." Zagreus rubbed at the sharp grain of frost that had caught in his lashes. It tumbled into the waters of the Lethe. Suddenly, the elegant mists were more threatening than inviting. "Even if she's forgotten who she is, she's around here somewhere. I'll find her."

Laughter echoed in the small cavern, barely loud enough to be heard over the tumbling waters. "Stubborn lad. I knew someone like that, once. It did not end well for him either." The Lonely Myrmidon shook his head and levered himself upright. "If you will insist on this fool's errand, I will at least aid you this much: the Stadium is the center of activity here, such as it may be called. If there is anyone who may recall one such as you seek, they will be found there." He didn't wait before turning to follow one of the few paved paths that existed.

Zagreus scrambled to his feet and dashed to catch up. "Thank you, sir. I don't know how I'll ever repay you."

"You will repay me by leaving, stranger." Sorrow-darkened eyes met Zagreus's for the first time. "If you do not find her, you will go. Return to the world above, and live your life. I would not see another young man ruined, throwing everything away to attempt the impossible, god or no."

That didn't sound ominous at all. "As I said, sir," Zagreus replied stiffly, "I don't know how I'll ever repay you."

At least he got a smile from that. It was there and gone, but it had definitely existed. "Then I pray the Fates will not require I extract my payment."

Definitely ominous. That sounded like something Ares would have said after Zagreus opted to spend a day with fishing with Poseidon rather than training for battle. "I will pray, as well." Metaphorically, anyway. He wasn't even certain gods heard the prayers of the dead, but he had a feeling they might be keeping an ear out for his voice.

It wouldn't be a worry, in any case. His mother was somewhere nearby. All he had to do was find her.

* * *

The Stadium was massive, far more so than Zagreus could have expected. Shades filled the seats, shoulder to shoulder, sometimes overlapping in their enthusiasm. Something about how they held themselves spoke of excitement, though there were still few full bodies to be seen. A few waved banners or chanted. Some had plucked flowers and were throwing them into the center of the arena where armored and armed shades challenged each other to battle.

Columns stretched up to what he had to assume was the roof of the cavern. It was so far above his head that even the general, all-encompassing light that shined in from everywhere and nowhere failed to touch it. The sight of that mass of darkness above was oddly comforting in the same way hiding his head under a blanket had been when he was a child. 

Its size wasn't the only oddity. There was something about the stands that made them seem to stretch into eternity, but even from all the way in the back he could see the fight perfectly. Zagreus paused to watch a few rounds. The warriors who made it to Elysium were supposed to be the best history had to offer. Only the greatest of mortals were given the gift of eternity in its hallowed fields.

Overall, it was kind of disappointing.

Most of the shades that did battle were painted in shadows, limned with brilliant red and orange as if to set themselves apart from the spectators. There was no order or strategy that he could see. Mostly, they just all slammed into each other, each shade their own army bent on the destruction of all the others. When injured too deeply they vanished in a flutter of arcane energy that he assumed meant their souls were being reformed somewhere. Then, when only one remained, the central arena emptied and a new match began.

As the Lonely Myrmidon said, the shades in the Stadium were far more responsive than those in the fields. More of their faces were visible in the shadows of their hats. A couple of times there were even eyes to meet, as long as he didn't try to talk to them in the middle of a bout.

"Half-god, you say? With golden hair?" His current conversation companion tilted her head. A memory of curls tumbled out from under her hat, so faint that Zagreus couldn't make out what color they might once have been. "That... I feel like I know her. You have her eyes. Eye. You have her eye. His eye? Her eye." He had an impression of furrowed brows to match the confusion in her voice. "She was very... Kind? Was she kind?"

"Yes! She was kind!" He tried to grab for the shade's hands, but she had them tucked somewhere in against her where they may very well have not existed. "That's what Grandmother..." A lump tightened his throat. "She was very kind. Do you know where she is? Is she in Elysium?"

"No—no, not here. It was... Where the pomegranates grow, next to a river of blood..." Something caught the shade's attention. She turned, drifting away from him, towards the arena. "The Champion is coming. The Champion is coming!"

Any questions Zagreus might have asked after that were drowned in a roar of cheers so loud it brought small pebbles down from the ceiling. Glitter and confetti filled the air.

" _Icicles_!" Some of the festive littering got into his eyes, making Zagreus hiss and cover them out of hard-won instinct. He'd spent a good week half-blind once because Dionysus had been trying out new methods of celebration. This was not the time to repeat the experience.

Unfortunately, eyesight wasn't a problem for those without physical eyeballs to worry about, so they just kept chucking it in the air. All Zagreus could do was hunch, cover his face, and wait for the adulation to stop. 

It didn't. It kept going, and _going_. _And going._ Every time it seemed like the enthusiasm was about to fade, something charged it up to new heights. Through his fingers, Zagreus could just make out some blond-headed twit in the area, marching around and waving his spear between striking melodramatic poses. Every time he did, the audience screamed to pseudo-life again.

And where were they getting so much _confetti_?

Eventually, gods on Olympus _eventually_ , even the so-called Champion had to get down to business.The crowd calmed, and the shower of eyeball-destroying debris eased. He faced a field of twenty or so of the other shades, all of them armed with a variety of weapons, all of them aimed at the shade who had taken the center of the field.

A bell rang. The slaughter began.

To the untrained eye it might have looked impressive. The Champion was a single man against a whole collection of enemies. His shield blocked their blows easily as he took aim with his spear. Fast footwork kept him from being swarmed. He laughed freely, taunting them as he picked them off. 

Trained by Athena and Ares, Zagreus saw something very different. Just like in the previous fights, none of the shades worked together. It was sheer luck when two or more of them happened to get the Champion pinned to a wall, and simplicity itself for a lone man to slip such a shoddy vise. The shields were slow to turn when he got behind them, and the ones with bows and spears seemed to take forever to line up a shot. It was no wonder he was winning so handily. It was barely a challenge.

"Some champion." Zagreus leaned forward on the rail in front of him as the last contestant fell. Once again the audience cheered itself to life and then back again, and the man seemed to eat it up. He pranced in circles, waving spear and shield in the air while stepping through the ghostly remnants of his competitors. Thankfully, there was no more confetti, so when the victory lap was over and the doors opened Zagreus was able to see precisely who waited on the other side.

"Was that—" He clambered atop the railing, firmly ignoring the complaints of those who had no heads or shoulders to be stepped on. "That's the Bull of Minos!"

It had to be. Unless there was some other half-bull humanoid running around the realm of the dead. Which... Zagreus tried not to think about too deeply. Lord Zeus was known to get around, but surely he would have heard if there were more than one minotaur. Queen Hera still sometimes yelled about the swan thing.

Zagreus leaped up onto the rail, caught his footing, and started hopping down the rows. Loud, complaints followed in his wake, but he moved too fast for anything more than that to happen. The shades seemed to prefer going insubstantial to making contact, which gave him a neat, direct line for the exit, and by the time they solidified he was well out of range. He dropped down into the arena and skidded out the door as fast as his frozen feet could carry him.

Outside the stadium was oddly empty. It didn't look like the odd market-square sort of place that the Lonely Myrmidon had led him through, but neither was it any sort of special Champion's Chamber like he might have imagined a grandstanding braggart to demand. Instead, Zagreus found himself dashing into a small, peaceful meadow, much like many others. The bridge that arched over the Lethe was adorned with fearsome-looking statues, their spears pointing at the far-away sky and their expressions locked into a battle grimace. Butterflies and gentle rainbows filled the air.

Across the bridge, the supposed Champion had ducked his head into a decorative fountain. "—a most satisfying victory, Asterius. They fell to me as stalks of wheat during the harvest. You should have joined me, my friend!"

The Bull of Minos— _oh my gods oh my gods_ —stood at the Champion's elbow. "There is no joy to be found in felling wheat," he rumbled in a voice that went straight to Zagreus's knees.

His war axe was at least the size of the other man, but he hefted it as easily as if it were made of feathers and not cold, hard bronze. Muscles bulged even without the strain of fighting to give them definition, and Zagreus wasn't ashamed that his mouth went a little dry. The monster Ariadne had spoken of had no place in the giant before him.He even wore a laurel, carefully braided in so as to not dislodge.

"But the crowds _love_ it!" The Champion turned to clasp the Bull on his elbow. He froze and finished turning to look Zagreus square on. His golden locks were sopping wet, dripping water down his handsome face. After a moment of silence, he took a half-step sideways so the beads of water caught the light and sparkled. "Look! So eager, they even follow us beyond the Stadium! I must extend my apologies, young shade, we are not currently offering autographs."

The Bull, Asterius, was faster on his feet. He centered himself, and his grip on his axe firmed. "That is no shade, King."

"Ah, no, I'm not—" Zagreus held up his hands, palm out, and hoped they ignored the sword at his hip. "No shade. I'm here on a visitor's pass."

If anything, that only seemed to make Asterius even more suspicious. His eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared. "That seems unlikely."

The small bit of intelligence the Champion owned seemed to finally crackle to life. He drew his shield from his back. "Speak your business, vile interloper, or you shall meet the end of my spear!" 

Zagreus, who had been nearly gored by twice already in his young life, mentally scrambled. "I—Uhhhhh—I come bearing a message for you, sir! For the Bull of Minos, I mean." Sudden, excruciating awkwardness grabbed Zagreus by the innards and twisted. He'd never been in the presence of a celebrity. Well, he grew up on Olympus, but that was family. It was different. "It's from my Uncle and—that is, Lord Poseidon and Lady Aphrodite. They would like that I extend you their regards, and their regrets."

_They would like, they would like_ _,_ Zagreus insisted to himself, painfully aware of the delicate line of honesty he tread upon. If they had known he'd be meeting with their handiwork in person, they certainly would have said something. At least, he hoped they would. Probably. Neither spoke of it much, but Zagreus had always had the feeling that the circumstances around the creation of the Minotaur was one of the few times even the gods admitted they may have let their wrath get the better of their good sense.

"Thank you for the message." Asterius's head tilted. As far as Zagreus could read his expression, he looked pleased. At least he relaxed his grip on his axe, which was probably a good sign. "Next you see them, you may tell them that I bear no hard feelings. The past is past, and I am well pleased with my lot."

"You do not appear to be Lord Hermes." Compared to his companion, the Champion practically bristled. Apparently he was only able to keep one idea in his head at a time, and just then that idea was that Zagreus wasn't welcome. "Who are you, stranger, that you bear the missives of the gods themselves?" 

_Stranger_ on his lips sounded a lot less kind than it had on the Lonely Myrmidon's. Zagreus drew himself up taller. "My name is Zagreus, grandson of Lady Demeter, goddess of the seasons. And who are _you_ supposed to be?"

For a second, Zagreus honestly thought the shade would explode in sheer outrage. Before it could happen, the Bull placed his hand on the Champion's shoulder. "You overstep yourself, short one. You are in the presence of Theseus, slayer of the Minotaur and the greatest king Athens has ever known."

"Never heard of him," Zagreus answered automatically, before his brain entirely finished ticking over the words. "King of Athens and slayer of the—hey, doesn't that mean he killed _you_?"

Asterius shrugged one beefy shoulder. "It was a complicated time."

"I can imagine." But that wasn't the only part of the introduction that was nagging at him. Well, aside for the _short one_ business. There was something about that name, though. Something familiar...

_"I waited for days on Naxos. Waited for Theseus to return, as the pitiful supplies he had left behind dwindled and despair took root..."_

Zagreus's hand clenched around the hilt of his sword and, for perhaps the first time in his existence, he understood his family's occasional bouts of wrath. He could fight and win, he was certain he could. What he'd seen in the Stadium wasn't so skilled as to put him off. Even if Asterius joined in, he could take them down. Take revenge. But—

What was death to a shade? Zagreus couldn't take the man's life. That was already gone. No, it had to be something else. Something that he would miss.

He took a breath. Forced a smile on his face. Once he was sure he had it, he looked Theseus in the eye. "Actually, I must apologize. I think I have heard of you, King Theseus. My cousin told me your tale just recently. It was quite the story. Legendary, in fact."

Like the nitwit he was, the former king immediately began preening under the praise. "I do have a fair number of accomplishments to my name," he admitted with a faux modesty that could have made a statue grind its teeth. His muscles flexed, as if someone who'd grown up watching Hephaestus at the forge could be impressed by just that. "Which of my feats was it? The six labors? My time spent in this very place? The defeat of my very good friend, Asterius, before he was my very good friend?"

It was funny how in-control Zagreus felt, like an icy sheath hiding the raging river beneath. He'd had never been a great liar, but he didn't have to be. At least, not for long. "You're the reason Lord Dionysus met his wife, mate!" Step by overly casual step, Zagreus wandered across the bridge. He deliberately pitched his voice low, making the deceased king strain to hear it. "He never would have found her if it weren't for you!"

Asterius made a confused noise, and a hint of uncertainty entered Theseus's eyes. It didn't stop him from stepping closer. He was much more real than most of the other shades, more like the Myrmidon. Most of them didn't have faces, or legs. They drifted everywhere. Theseus _walked_ , with steps that were just barely audible. Grass crushed under his sandals.

Whether it was an effect of being the _Champion_ or something else, Zagreus really didn't care. He just kept talking, and watched that mostly-solid figure approach. "Dionysus, he followed your story. Not just the song and the—the legends, but live, while it was happening. When he'd heard about everything, he had to come down off Olympus and check it out, and there she was."

That hadn't been exactly the way he'd been told it happened.

_"Drunk as a vinter who'd fallen into his own wares. I don't even know why he did it. He just staggered down into the Underworld, sweet as you please, half-naked and stained gold with nectar from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. When I saw him I thought one of the statues had come to life. He'd smiled said— he said, 'Hey babe, how'd you like to become a goddess?'"_

Theseus didn't seem to care that Zagreus was dancing around a story more than telling it. His eyes were bright as he leaned in, lapping up every word. "I am flattered to have so caught the attention of Lord Dionysus," he declared, as if being flattered by himself wasn't clearly his default state of existence. "However, I fear that this happy union may have happened after I, ah, departed the mortal realm to instead grace the fine halls of the blessed dead. Perhaps you could share with me the lady's name, so I might convey my congratulations?"

_Closer. Closer. A little more. Come on.._. "Her name?"

A line formed between the supposed Champion's brows, as if he could tell Zagreus was leading to something. "Yes, her name," he snapped, "so I might know which lady so greatly benefited from my many victories that she was brought into the arms of a god!"

Finally, _finally_ , he stepped in close enough to touch.

Zagreus grinned. "Oh, she's the Lady Ariadne."

He had the pleasure—no, the _delight_ —of seeing the blowhard's eyes go wide in recognition. It lasted for a heartbeat before Zagreus's fist connected with his nose.

Theseus cursed and staggered back. Dark ichor dribbled down his chin, vanishing before it could stain his clothes. While he was still reeling, Zagreus grabbed him by the shoulders and _whirled_. The former king was skilled enough that he might have recovered from a shove, but the spin threw him even further off-balance. He hadn't been prepared for a battle, and couldn't manage to bring up his weapons to force Zagreus off.

They kept spinning until the green-pink-gray of Elysium became a blur and unguarded open air tickled Zagreus's bare foot. He jerked to an unsteady stop, but Theseus kept going, staggering right off the edge of the bridge. The Lethe didn't send up so much as a splash. Its mists swallowed him whole.

Maybe it _was_ a bad idea to swim in the waters of the Underworld.

" _Theseus_!" The stomp of heavy feet rattled the bridge behind him. Zagreus looked up again just in time to see the Bull of Minos charge. An axe blade skimmed the back of his neck as he dodged, and then again when Asterius turned on a heel to take another swing. He barely ducked the blow, dropping down low so the blade skimmed over his head, missing by inches. His leg caught the Asterius's ankle, staggering him. Before he could recover, Zagreus kicked, sending him tipping off the edge of the bridge and into the clouded river.

"He killed you too, you know!" Zagreus shouted uselessly into the seething morass of white mist. There was no sign of them. Not a flash of darker color or any hint of movement. It was as if they'd just been taken somewhere else, far more rapidly than any normal river ever could have dreamed.

Of course, it wasn't any normal river. It was the Lethe.

For a moment, he almost felt bad. Asterius had seemed like a good sort. He hadn't thought about the bull-man at all when he'd made his half-plan. But then he touched the back of his neck and his fingers came away red. A little closer slower and it might have been the end of him. That made it rather difficult to care too much. Asterius had chosen his loyalties, and stuck with them. Wherever the waters took him and his king, they'd be fine. After all, they were already dead. And maybe time without his remembered glory would do the Champion some good.

Zagreus, meanwhile, was _never_ going to get the stains out, _ugh_.

He turned, and stumbled over something that rattled heavily on the stone arch. A square-ish bottle of amber liquid, firmly stoppered, glittered up at him in the strange light of Elysium.

"Well, hello." Zagreus scooped it up, bloody fingerprints streaking across the glass as he examined it. "What's a bottle of ambrosia doing down here?"

The liquid inside gleamed, more metallic than it had any right to be in such odd lighting. It clung thick and sticky where it sloshed gently against the sides of its container, holding on before sliding back to rest like a lover's sigh. Even on Olympus it was a prize. Each bottle was unique, and carefully kept for only the rarest of occasions. Supposedly drinking it brought up the best of memories.

Zagreus couldn't say if the rumors were true or not. He'd only had it a few times. Mostly it just made him a little dizzy and vaguely sad.

"I'll just have to save you for someone who will appreciate you better than I can," he told the bottle before tucking it away.

No time to be a sad sack anyway. He had a mother to find.

* * *

The shade in the Stadium had been helpful in narrowing down Zagreus's questions. He didn't know his mother well—or at all, truthfully. To him she had only been a face in a portrait buried deep in Olympus and the heart of the few tales anyone dared share with him. It wasn't enough to search by.

Pomegranate trees, though? By a river that could only be the Styx? That was a solid place to start asking about. It couldn't get him any fewer answers, at least.

And, in fact, it didn't. Once he changed the course of his questions from a golden-haired half-mortal woman to pomegranate trees, the denizens of Elysium reacted entirely differently. All of them at least knew of the strange abundance of pomegranates. A few of the more unique ones, the ones who retained a greater vestige of their former selves, even recalled the garden they grew in. Accounts differed. Some spoke of heavily scented night-blooming flowers that lined a garden path. Others mentioned tall, forbidding walls that protected newly planted saplings. A fountain, an arch, music, silence, the ghosts of children racing about, locked gates and empty walkways...

The only thing they all seemed to agree upon was that wherever they grew, the trees were not to be found in Elysium.

One last set of doors led into a narrow, winding cavern. On one side the Lethe bubbled pleasantly, slightly more liquid and less fog than he'd seen in other locations. To the other a cliff overlooked the rest of the oddly segmented space that formed the home of the blessed dead. The Stadium stood in isolated glory in the far distance. Shades collected along the overlook, peacefully observing their home.

He joined them, taking a moment to look the place over. From above, it seemed so much larger than it had been to walk. There was no sign of the far wall or the rise that led to the Temple. Obviously there had to be one, but it was so distant as to be invisible. As he watched, the ground trembled, and caverns rotated around each other, locking into an entirely new puzzle-path. 

At least he knew better than to trust memory. That would have been useful about fifty-something chambers prior.

Zagreus broke away from the shades and followed the river. It had become his guide, as much as anything could have been in such a place. Its sloped banks were pleasantly familiar by now. Welcoming, even.

As he rounded the bend, he found yet another set of doors, and a familiar face. Flickering, mostly-substantial, the form of the Lonely Myrmidon stood before the next exit. His shoulders were still rounded and his eyes sad, but he held his spear in a firm grasp and his feet remained firmly planted on the meadow grass.

"Hello, sir." Zagreus didn't stop walking until he was about fifteen feet away. Out of reach, he hoped, though some of the weapons he'd seen shades use in Elysium far outmatched anything in the mortal wars above. "Lovely evening, isn't it? Or morning, I guess. I'm starting to lose track."

Like the great hero he must have once been, the shade didn't allow himself to be distracted so easily. "You did not find her then."

"No, but I found something. It wasn't a complete waste, thanks to your help." Zagreus's eyes flickered between the figure in green leathers and the simple set of doors behind him. It didn't look any different than the one he'd just came through, but... "That's the way out, isn't it?"

"Into Asphodel, yes."

It was odd, how difficult breathing could be sometimes. There was no reason for it. Zagreus's lungs just decided that they would take in half as much as usual, and he could shovel shit if he didn't agree. The back of his neck still stung from Asterius's blade. It had stopped bleeding, but something about the air kept it from icing into comfortable numbness the way his wounds usually did. Would other wounds do the same? How much could he take?

_As much as I have to._

Zagreus stared the shade in the eye. It was hard to do. There was a lifetime of pain there, bared and open for anyone to see. Perhaps more than a lifetime, all things considered. "I don't want to fight you, sir."

"Nor I you." In spite of the words, nothing about the shade's stance changed. "Regardless, this is not your place, and the deeper you travel the more you will find that the Underworld holds worse than butterflies. Go home, stranger. Return to Olympus. I doubt your mother would wish to see her child throw himself into the pits for her sake."

The blow landed as sharply as it had no doubt been intended. Zagreus's hand settled on the hilt of his sword. He could feel the power of Ares humming in it. Finely honed, crafted by Hephaestus himself, it thirsted for blood, for the anguished wails of those it cut down. It was a sword that wished to maim far more than to kill. "I do not want to fight you, sir," he repeated, louder, as he took a step closer, and then another, well into range of the man's weapon. "But I will. Let me pass."

The spear didn't rise, but neither did the shade step aside. He only shook his head in disappointment. "Perhaps I was unclear. I _will not_. I know my limits, and I have had my fill unwinnable battles. This is not my fight.

"But I will take the matter to the one whose fight it _is_."

Before Zagreus could begin to ask what that meant, the shade slammed the butt of his spear against the ground. It cracked like Zeus's worst storms. Arcane light flared around his feet, forming a circle of sigils that twisted faster than Zagreus could read them. "Lord Hades!" The shade's hollow voice boomed off the cavern walls. "Your humble servant petitions you for redress of a grievance!"

" _What_?" Zagreus grabbed for the shade, but already a swirl of blood—the Styx?—had risen about his feet as a protective shield. It wrapped around the figure, eclipsing it, before falling away into a red pool that quickly vanished into the ground. Just like that, the Lonely Myrmidon had gone.

_That_ couldn't mean anything good.


	7. The House of Hades: Preordination

"Oh, this dastardly curse! This hellish punishment, received for assuredly no rightful cause! But fear not, my friend! Our beautiful faces shall once again be our own! We shall be restored! I swear it to you— uhhhh..." A whispered question, loud enough that it was clearly audible all the way across the House. "Asterius— yes, yes, I swear it to you, Asterius!"

Thanatos pinched the bridge of his nose and kept his eyes firmly locked on the soothing red flow of the Styx. He wished he could adequately cover his ears, but their newly arrived _guests_ —the only polite term he could make himself use—were difficult to block out. Even from where they had been led to wait in the garden they were impossible to muffle.

The mystery of their arrival had disrupted the peace of the House, at least. Thanatos took some small pleasure in no longer being the only one who felt out of sorts. Lack of memory had stolen the vistors' countenance, and—conveniently—clues as to their circumstance. Shades didn't often go _swimming_. Especially not shades such as those two. Lord Hades had dispatched Aegea and a troop of her Amazons to investigate and hold the line, but until the former King of Athens recovered there was little chance of learning what had happened.

Or of being rid of them.

"The victories we must have shared in life! In death! We shall again, my brother! We shall again!"

Whatever the reply, it wasn't loud enough to carry, but it caused a jubilant laugh to echo to the rafters. Only Dusa's constant labor to keep them clean saved those below from being showered by cobwebs and dust. The little gorgon was, of course, nowhere to be seen. She tended to vanish when things got loud.

Wise of her. He wished he could follow her example, but his mother had said to stay, and so he would. Any mortals awaiting his attention would have to continue waiting. The constant, aching pull of duty—no, of something more than duty, of _need—_ was a distraction he had no choice but to suffer until the Fates should release him from it.

It was only because he had his attention so firmly turned away from the dramatics of the garden that Thanatos saw the golden shimmer of a yet another new arrival speeding along with the flow of the river. The shade passed through the portal and, presumably, rose from the Pool out of his sight.

"Welcome to the House of Hades, where we serve death with a smile!" Usually easy-going, even Hypnos sounded stressed. "Lord Hades isn't at his desk at the moment, but if you could please verify your name, realm of existence and cause of death we'll be happy to contact you when—"

"I come bearing important information for Lord Hades regarding the security of his realm." 

From over his shoulder, Thanatos heard a sharp intake of breath. He turned his head, curious, and saw Achilles standing at his post with a rigidity that might have put a statue to shame. His eyes stared directly ahead, and his jaw had tightened. The only thing that marked him as more than stone was his hand on his spear. It trembled.

Thanatos kept one ear on the conversation between his brother and the newest arrival, but he couldn't resist drifting back up the hall. "You look as though you've seen a ghost."

Legendarily proud, brave Achilles only shook his head. "Much worse, I'm afraid," he murmured in a voice as broken as any Thanatos had heard during his work. "But they do say the regrets of the past shall ever haunt us. I should have expected it would be a very literal..." 

His voice choked to a stop as the arrival stepped into view, clearly being guided towards the waiting area in the Western Hall.

"—intruder in the fields of Elysium," the visiting shade explained to a furiously scribbling Hypnos. "From Olympus, he said, though I know not what sort of god he might have been. Winter, perhaps. Snow trailed in his wake, and ice where he... tread..." As far as they could, the shade's feet stumbled to a stop.

The new shade took their House Guard in, eyes flicking from the sigil of Hades at his breast to the spear in his hand. It was the only truly notable difference between the green-hued clothing and Myrmidon armor they both wore—visiting shades were not permitted weaponry in the House. Only staff.

When their eyes met, it was Achilles who first lowered his.

"Patroclus."

The whisper was a death rattle more than speech, and it explained far more than it had any right to. Thanatos suspected that, if he looked in the archives, he would find it had been Achilles's last word. He had witnessed less worthy ones.

Hypnos carried on, oblivious as ever. "Looking for his mother, you said?" he asked. "Did you catch her name?" He didn't so much as look up from his parchment. The feathered end of his quill wagged furiously, and ink splattered everywhere. It dotted his pale cheeks and hair like stars, if someone had taken the Night's sky and reversed the colors.

Pity was a bit of a disadvantage in Thanatos's line of work. He didn't give into it often. This time, he let it guide him to his brother's shoulder, where he carefully tugged at Hypnos's quilted cape to draw his attention out of himself for once. "Brother, I think you have enough for Lord Hades for now." He gestured to Achilles, who had not recovered at all in the moment. If anything, he looked even worse, as if he might throw _himself_ in the Lethe for the release it would provide.

"Huh?" Too-large eyes finally lifted from the parchment. When they saw the two shades staring at each other, they became even wider. "Ooooooooh. Yeah, I forgot about that."

"You would," Thanatos murmured as he grabbed Hypnos by the shoulders and pushed him back towards the throne room. "Leave them for now."

For once, his twin kept his mouth shut and allowed himself to be maneuvered away, though his eyes didn't stop bouncing between the fallen heroes until Thanatos covered them with his palm. The dead waiting in the Great Hall were just as bad, all of them craning their necks—those that had them—to try and catch a glimpse of the historic reunion. Or the historic argument, it was difficult to be certain. Either way, they didn't get in his way as he pushed Hypnos across to the lounge.

Mother Nyx raised her eyebrows at her sons. From her position she had only to move forward to see what was unfolding. She hadn't, but Thanatos suspected from her expression that she didn't need to. Nothing in the House escaped her notice.

When Thanatos glanced back, there hadn't been any obvious change. The fallen Myrmidons spoke with a quiet intensity that, though inaudible from a distance, rattled the stillness of the House far more than even Theseus's absurd declarations. They had not moved closer. Not in any way that registered to the eye, at least, yet somehow it still seemed as though the space between them was shrinking with every moment.

Envy, even more than pity, was something Thanatos did not allow himself much. He looked away. "Apparently there is more news from Elysium," he reported to his mother. "Our Master should be informed."

Nyx folded her hands together before her. "Tell me."

Even Hypnos knew better than to resist their mother when she used that tone. He unfurled his list of arrivals, which had been hastily marked over with notes. "Um, well, someone living is in Elysium. Probably Therod—" Hypnos squinted at his own abysmal handwriting. His face twisted as he mouthed the words to himself, trying to make sense of himself. "No, that's the farming accident. Probably a—a—"

"A god, from Olympus," Thanatos finished for him, pointing to where the passage continued.

"That! Right!" Hypnos beamed at him until Thanatos cleared his throat pointedly, which sent his eyes skimming back to his work. "A god fresh off Olympus. Dark hair, lot of ice, probably some minor deity of snow or something. He came looking for his mortal mother. Seemed pretty serious about finding her, according to—well, you know."

Their mother's dark lips pressed together in a thoughtful line. "He did not kill Cerberus." She said it simply, as if it were a given that could never be in dispute. And, Thanatos had to admit, it was unlikely to be worth argument. Not only because the great hound was fierce, but also surely he would have arisen from the Styx. Those who belonged to the House always returned to it.

Still, there were many resting points between death and defeat. "Should I see to the Temple?" Thanatos kept his tone flat, but he saw the understanding in his mother's eyes when they turned on him. He had to look away, shamed into compliance. No secrets, even now.

"A moment yet, and we shall see what needs be done." Nyx's eyes slipped to the side, starlight vanishing behind clouds as she stared at something much further away than merely the wall before her. "Cerberus is well. He yet guards the Temple, unaware that anyone has passed his post." A curious tension thrummed through her voice. "Elysium is in peace. There has been some small disturbance, but the shades there already forget. There is..." She paused. Whatever she saw caused her eyebrows to lift. "I see."

Thanatos stiffened. "What is it?"

When his mother's eyes locked on him, once again in herself, her expression was inscrutable. Glyphs formed around her feet in gleaming golden light. "When he is free, you will report to Lord Hades that the intruder approaches Asphodel." 

"What about you?"

"I must attend to a promise made long ago. The Queen will understand in due time." The runes gathered power, and blinding brilliance akin to the sun. They flared, and died away, taking the Night with them.


	8. Asphodel: Bathhouse Attire

Asphodel was supposed to be a peaceful meadow, filled with the majority of the mortal dead. Zagreus imagined it would be somewhat like the forests Artemis took him to, or perhaps a small handful of mortal towns where they could form afterlives that mirrored their time on the surface.

It was decidedly not.

"Liquid fire? It had to be liquid fire." He stared out at the tiny lumps of charred rock floating across the flaming... something. It flowed like water, but it burned like Hephaestus's forge, and glowed like the same. It hurt to stare at for too long, but there was nowhere else to look. Much like the Temple grounds, chunks of fallen buildings and columns littered the place like debris from an era long past. Ancient tombs floated by, carved with ghastly faces locked in expressions of eternal torment. Spectral hands clawed their way from its depths, but these he had absolutely no desire to high-five.

Worse than the decor was the heat. It was worse than even the forge, rising up in suffocating waves. Even at a safe distance from the fire, he could feel the sweat dripping off of him. It sizzled where it hit the rock. Or maybe he was melting. His feet had an unhealthy pink flush, and the usual ice that formed under them was just a puddle that swiftly evaporated in the sweltering heat. His laurel, which was usually frosted over, dripped unpleasantly down the back of his neck.

Much loved, Ariadne's gift was too much for him to bear. He pulled it off and folded it up to carry under an arm and looked around. Shades clad mostly in red stared at him with a dull curiosity. Like those in Elysium, most of them lacked face and form. Unlike their better-off counterparts, they stood together in groups. Their voices were a constant murmur under the hiss and grinding stone of their home.

It was worth a try. "Pardon me, my good shades," he called, lifting his voice to be audible. "Might I have a moment of your time?"

The group nearest him paused. Most of them turned, though a few visibly rolled what remained of their eyes. They were actually _in_ the fire, floating freely as if the heat made no difference to them. There was a brief moment of echoed conversation that went back and forth in a blur of hissing before a hulking red mass of a spirit separated from the group and approached.

"An ill-mannered request to make of those who no longer have any time to their names at all," a male voice snapped from somewhere under the all-concealing hood. His voice had the same whispered, echoing quality as every other shade Zagreus had spoken with, but there was a distinct air of peevishness that made it carry. "Especially coming from one who, if I am not mistaken—and I seldom am—has all the time in the cosmos."

The shade was different from the rest in more than voice. What Zagreus had originally assumed was just a larger form than most turned out to be, inexplicably, a barrel. Or the ghost of one, at least. It was massive enough to hold three and carried by a pair of straps hooked over the shade's shoulders. Every foot or so caused the barrel to bounce, as if affected by the steps of feet that no longer existed.

There was no turning around and leaving the way he would have with a divine quarrel. Zagreus did his best to sound apologetic. "I apologize, sir. I would ask some questions, and if you have answers I would be very grateful to hear them."

Minding his words so carefully was like trying to get around the Sphinx the time it set up near the baths and had to be shooed off by a broom. Up close he had more definition to his features, though it took some effort to make them out. His nose was a bit large and strong, but it came with a heavy brow to match. Wisps of smoke curled out from the hood, forming a dark imitation of hair and a beard. It waggled back and forth hypnotically. Zagreus could actually see the shade's face twist and writhe as he attempted to find something in the request to take fault with.

Quest for fault denied, the barrel bounced in a sharp sigh. "I suppose I might. My name is..." There was a dramatic pause. Zagreus waited dutifully, even as it dragged out far longer than it had any right to. Eventually the barrel heaved, and the beard flared with fresh sparks. "Diogenes. If you have any taste at all, you will recognize the name."

Zagreus did indeed recognize the name. "You're the one with the—"

Fire flared, and Diogenes lit up like a candle. The other dead scattered back out of some instinct that no doubt served them well in life.

" _We. Do. Not. Speak. Of. The. Chicken._ " 

"Ah, yes—of course, I would never ask about—" The smoke beard had begun shedding ash. "— _that_. I was only wondering if... ah... um..." It took all of his willpower for Zagreus to force away thoughts of the Infamous Chicken. He needed answers too much to risk it. But his actual questions, which he'd known firmly a moment before, were buried under thoughts this shade patiently plucking a bird purely to make a mockery of one of history's greatest philosophers.

 _Think. Think. Think_. 

His breath released in a rush of cool air that fogged in the sweltering heat. "If it's not too forward to ask, you seem very cluckec— _collected_ to be so ephemeral. In Elysium I was told that was an effect of the Lethe, but it doesn't seem to be the case."

That seemed to be another sore spot, though one of a different sort. The barrel heaved in a circle, forcing Zagreus to step back or be smacked by it. " _Bah_. The Lethe! Weaklings. Can't mind their own minds." Diogenes turned his hood and spat. The spittle flamed on the ground before fading to an orange glow. "No, boy, no, you wouldn't wear your robes in the bathhouse would you? This is our bathhouse. Used to be we could step out of it, but the Phlegethon's gotten other ideas of late."

Other shades bobbled on what Zagreus took to be the closest to a nod that they could manage without more of a form to take. He looked around, processing the seemingly universal agreement. "So you're saying that shades who don't have their original forms..."

"Naked! Nude my boy! Stripped of all traces of an externally imposed sense of self, leaving only the deepest truth of identity behind!" He didn't seem to have hands, but Diogenes did _something_ that made the barrel echo alarmingly. His whole torso swung, nearly catching Zagreus in the chin. "Of course, it happens to the weak of mind after enough time spent dead, but those of us with stronger forces of will may choose to bare ourselves or not, as we please. I'm composing an entire work on the nature of existence." He paused, and the barrel slowly swung back to a mostly-vertical position. "Or I would if the scrolls would stop catching fire."

"I can see why that would be a problem," Zagreus nodded seriously, and tried not to think about the chance that his mother might be wandering around in the spiritual buff.

"Quite. But I suspect you did not, initially, wish to inquire about my attire. Or lack thereof." The vague bundle of shadow that seemed to be eyebrows by their position in the hood lifted pointedly. "You clearly do not belong in Asphodel among us exceptionally common dead. What brings you here?"

Zagreus rubbed the back of his head awkwardly, causing some of the dried blood to flake off. "I'm looking for someone—my mother. She died in childbirth, and..." A soft, understanding murmur of understanding went up around him. More shades gathered in, as if more drawn by his plight than alarmed by Diogenes's mercurial moods. One reached out with a wisp of a former limb to pat his shoulder. "All I know is that she's where the pomegranate trees grow next to a river of blood. Do you happen to know where that might be, sir?"

"Hm. Pomegranate trees... _Hm_..." Diogenes and his barrel rolled back and forth in half-circle around Zagreus. It didn't change the direction his hooded face pointed at all. After a minute he dropped, vanishing entirely into the body of the barrel with a sound like a cork popping.

It seemed to be some sort of signal. Other shades gathered around him in a thick cluster, and the crackling echoes of their whispers rose up like the dream of a madman. Or a philosopher. One in the same, practically. Zagreus took a step back to give them space as they, hopefully, didn't plot his demise.

Finally, the shades parted, and Diogenes rose up like a child's spring-toy, and accompanied by a similar sound. He bounced so hard that the barrel nearly separated from him and had to be caught and carefully lowered back into position to hide his unadorned existence and deepest truth of identity. "You will not find the one you seek in this dread place," Diogenes pronounced, with the weight of a prophet delivering grave tidings from the stars. "You might have noticed that the river Phlegethon has flooded Asphodel, and none know of a place where such a tree might grow here. You must seek her in Tartarus."

A deeper chill than usual stabbed just under Zagreus's ribs. "My mother is _not_ among the wretched dead."

It was an impossible thought to consider. Elysium, of course she could have been there. As the daughter of a god, her place among the exalted only made sense. Asphodel, well... maybe there had been a problem with the parchmentwork, or Hades' well-known grudge against Olympians had resulted in an unfair judgment. It was _possible_.

Tartarus, though? That was reserved for the worst of the worst, or those who had earned a unique sort of punishment. As far as Zagreus knew, his mother never had a chance to spite anyone so personally. There was simply no reason for her to have been sent there.

Diogenes shrugged while his barrel remained still. "Are you certain she's near a pomegranate tree, lad?"

 _No._ "Yes." It was the only lead he had, after all, and it was either that or search a place that may as well have been large as eternity itself.

This time, the barrel shrugged without the assistance of any shoulders to make it move. "Then Tartarus is your only option. If you don't find her there, you can ask Lord Hades himself. There's a reason most ask, rather than wander in eternal circles." He gave Zagreus a look that, if he'd had visible eyes, might have been side-long. "You young folk always have to do things the difficult way."

One of the clustered shades cleared its throat pointedly. Both Diogenes and the barrel ignored it.

"Follow the river, boy. It knows where it's going, unlike you. If you do far enough downstream, you'll find your way." The faint glimmer of what might be been Diogenes' feet vanished up into the body of the barrel. It rolled gently back into the stream of liquid flame where it bounced like a duck on a pond. "Mind the magma!"

"Thank you for your assistance!" Zagreus called, mostly out of habit. His eyes fixed on the small rafts of bone that lined the banks.

Downriver. When the river was on fire.

Wonderful.

* * *

Whatever it once might have been, Asphodel had been reduced down to a few paltry rocks standing like bastions on the river. Ancient tombs floated in it, and chunks of charred bone carved from some sort of giant formed ties for the raft. Skulls piled in great, ashy heaps, their gaping eye sockets left to stare into the flaming depths of oblivion.

It was, in Zagreus's opinion, all a bit much. It had to be a design choice, and a poor one at that. The Underworld was supposed to be about spirits, after all, not bodies. No one carted their loved one's corpse across the world to drop them in the Styx, if they could even find it. He found himself side-eying each and every melodramatic display of mortal impermanence that he came across. There was a lot to side-eye as he floated downstream.

And he _still_ hadn't seen any pomegranate trees.

His raft bumped to another stop, splashing flames up around his legs. His shins and knees had acquired a collection of blisters, and he wasn't eager to gain more. At least his feet were fine. Warm, but seemingly impervious to the damage. He still moved carefully as he hoped from the raft to the island; he hadn't yet tested stepping directly on the magma would do, but he doubted it would be pleasant.

The new island was a chunk of rock like any other, a long and narrow line of rock without much to speak for it. Someone had added the now-familiar decorative touches of weeping skeletons and an alarmingly blackened altar. The rest of it, though, was completely empty. All of the other islands he'd passed had shades collected around their edges, seemingly enjoying the unusual sight of a person with skin to burn. There weren't even any hands reaching from the waters. Zagreus stepped cautiously, eyes peeled.

He needn't have bothered with caution. A dark, glowing crystal that hovered in the dead center of the path like a drop of ice, frozen before it could fall. Power radiated from its depth in purple-hued swirls that grasped at the air before folding back in on themselves. The light that glimmered off its dark facets didn't match the red glow of the Phlegethon at all. They seemed to follow him as he leaned left to right, up and down. It was impossible to miss, and also impossible to dodge.

Zagreus crossed his arms and stared at the thing. "You cannot be serious."

It didn't even make an attempt at looking innocent.

The path was narrow enough that he had to edge close to see if there was a way around. He did his best to stay away from it, ducking low, but tendrils of power stretched to brush over his skin. Where it touched, it carried the echo of distant whispers. No death threats, or screams of agony. Instead, it hummed under his skin and behind his ears, full of murmuring voices that he felt like he ought to recognize. Some of them were utterly banal, complaints about the price of a drink or dog hair in the rug. One hissed about lost opportunities, forgotten glory and stolen beauty. Another spoke of purpose, the dichotomy of loneliness and satisfaction brought by duty carried out with perfection.

 _That_ voice made his heart ache in a familiar sort of way. Loneliness wasn't something Zagreus was any stranger to.

Even with that last voice pulling at him, it didn't take long for empathy to flame into anger. "I'm not afraid of you," Zagreus told the jewel firmly. He glared into its heart. The lights reflected off of it, but he didn't. It was a void, sucking in anything it couldn't mirror. "You can't manipulate me, and you can't stop me." 

It ignored him, continuing to exist in peaceful splendor rather than, say, turning into some sort of monstrosity and attacking.

"You're being very rude you know."

Nothing.

He kept his eyes on it as he edged past. It took almost belly-crawling to keep out of its reach. An uncomfortable amount of dirt and gravel got wedged in his clothes and scraped into the numerous small wounds he'd picked up on his journey. By the time he was on the other side, his annoyance had burned to an embarrassed pile of ashes. Maybe, just maybe, a random floating crystal radiating unearthly power in the middle of the Underworld's depths was exactly that, and nothing to be concerned about.

His embarrassment lasted until he reached the end of the island and hopped onto the raft to move downstream. Unlike every raft before, it failed to hiss into motion. He pushed at it, hit it, put a foot on the rock and attempted to shove off. It didn't so much as wobble.

Zagreus turned back. The gem was still there, still floating, reflected light still sparkling at him. It didn't even leave a shadow on the ground, as if it disdained such ordinary things. It didn't take Athena's brilliance to figure out what was expected.

"Trap or key, let's find out." Gritting his teeth, he stomped back to the center of the island and reached out.

As soon as his hand crossed its aura, the entire jewel collapsed in on itself. Darkness ran up his arms like spilled ink spreading across a page. Where it sank in it left no mark but Zagreus could feel it roiling inside him. The whispers subsided, and his heart eased down from his throat when no pain or attack came.

"Well. That was..." He had to pause to clear his throat. He felt different. Not incredibly so, but it was like Ariadne's cloak all over again. A line of warmth wound through his chest, totally different from the heat rising off the river. When he pressed his hand to it, he could feel the change like a physical thing, pulsing heat where there'd only ever been cold. "I really hope that wasn't a trap."

"It was not."

"AH!" He yanked out his sword and swung around to face the threat. His feet tangled on themselves, and the ice that always formed under him was practically water. Gravity, who he'd always suspected took a personal affront to his existence, once again saw an opportunity and seized it. Like a great tree Zagreus fell, head cracking against the seared ground.

And then there was only darkness.

* * *

"You wake."

For the second time on his journey, Zagreus woke to a woman looking over him. He blinked, forcing his eyes to focus through the throbbing in his head. She'd seated herself on a mass of shadow midair over the magma, chin in her palm and elbow on her knee as she looked down at him with a pensive expression. Her long, draping peplos was a shade of midnight he'd only ever seen just after sunset, when the sky hadn't yet gone entirely dark. Bare feet peeked out from under its hems, toenails painted in the same dark shade, as were her lips and fingernails. Distant lights gleamed in the long, draping locks of her hair, and her eyes were even more golden than her jewelry, glowing like stars.

Something about them was familiar. Pale skin and eyes that stood out in the shadows...

Or maybe that was the head wound.

Zagreus swallowed, and then groaned when that made his skull ache. "I—ah, sorry? I mean... Hi?" He lurched to his feet, choosing speed over dignity since he didn't have enough of the latter to try and salvage. When he rubbed the back of his head, his fingers came away red, and more blood decorated the ground where he'd fallen in a bright splatter. He really hoped people were lying when they said the stuff was important to keep on the inside. Otherwise, he was going to be in trouble.

Assuming he wasn't already. The woman was still staring at him, tapping her fingers against her cheek. Her stare covered him from the top of his head to the blood on the ground beneath him. None of it was impressed. "You have caused quite the stir, young man. Chaos, one could even say," she murmured. Her lips moved, but her voice was source-less, seeming to seep from every corner of the hall. "What have you to say for yourself?"

He'd grown up on Olympus, where power was tossed around without a care for who it might hit. More than once he'd had to dodge a flame because someone hadn't wanted to rise to light a candle. She didn't wield power so casually—she radiated power, _was_ power, with a simplicity that made Lord Zeus on his throne seem like a child in costume by comparison. 

When he thought about it that way, combined with the location and her garb, it rather made guessing easy. "I'm very sorry ma'am. I didn't mean to cause any trouble, and—pardon my asking, but you're the Lady Nyx, aren't you? The Night?"

The frown on her lips eased. She inclined head. Long strands of hair fell around her shoulders as she did. Constellations were born and died in them, flaring brilliance that faded into more darkness. "That I am. And what might your name be, you who invades my domain so blithely? Even Lord Hades, when he came to this place, sought my permission to take up his Fate-assigned duty."

Zagreus winced. His hand dropped to his sword hilt instinctively before better sense made him release it. There was nothing it could do for him other than make whatever was coming hurt worse. Zagreus knew that he sometimes didn't quite think things through all the way, but he wasn't enough of a fool to attack the Darkness. "My name is Zagreus, ma'am. Grandson of Lady Demeter. It's an honor to make your acquaintance."

It had to be a trick of the magma-light, but he thought he saw her smile. If she had, it was so swiftly over that it may as well not have existed at all. "Grandson of Demeter... We do not often receive visitors from Mount Olympus here."

 _Maybe if you didn't have a massive three-headed dog blocking the front door..._ "That's a shame. It's a lovely place. The décor really sets a mood. Very—ah, warm. Relaxing to some, I'm sure. At least, in the places I've seen. I'm sure you do your job well in all the... punishing and eternal torment parts, too."

That was definitely a smile. Good. At least if she dragged him back into the snow by his ankles, he'd know she was at amused by him. It might be what kept him alive to try again.

"You come seeking your mother. To return her to the surface, I presume?" All Zagreus could do was nod, and then brace himself when that made the world tilt under him. "You are not the first to attempt such a feat. Few succeed, and those that do often find the price of success to be beyond their means to pay. The Fates have a way of extracting their pound of flesh. Why do you embark upon such a venture, child?"

Child was better than intruder. He hoped. "It's... My grandmother. She's killing people up there. You have to have noticed! Numbers going up and all that? Maybe having trouble keeping the new arrivals from piling up? Long queues?" Lady Nyx merely kept staring at him, expectant. Zagreus clenched his fist tight enough for his short-clipped nails to dig into his palm. "And—she's my _mother_. Can't I at least _meet_ her? Even if I fail, I'll have had that. It's something, right?"

He may as well have been talking to a wall. Whatever small bit of amusement he'd been able to read in her expression fell away into something as cold and unfeeling as the night sky. Fitting, really. "You defy the will of the Fates. You must know it cannot be allowed."

"And the Fates have told you their will?"

She looked away. Answer enough.

Zagreus ran his fingers through his hair. The blood kept it back out of his eyes. Gross, but useful. "Look, a shade said they thought she saw her in a place where pomegranates grow. Do you know where that is?"

"I could not say."

 _Could not, or will not?_ Sphinxes again.

He was wasting time. "Well, thanks anyway. I'll just get back to—"

"Stop." Zagreus's blood chilled. In spite of himself, he froze in place, eyes lifting to her still-blank expression. "You risk your life and potentially your very existence to seek a woman you never knew... to give mortals you may never meet a few additional years? Mortals die. It is their nature to do so. They are not worth your grief."

He closed his eyes. _A still form leaning against a winter-bare tree, with a bouquet of snowdrops hidden in its cloak._

The body had been gone when he'd checked on it, but... He never had found out if the man had anyone to remember him. It seemed important, somehow, that he be remembered. Mourned, even if it was by no one important. Death wasn't the end for mortals, but it still seemed callous to pretend it didn't matter. 

"You sound just like the rest of them. How can you say that, when my grandmother's grief is causing _everyone_ so much pain? Is it different for her, somehow?" He shook his head, ignoring the way it made vision blur, and stalked past the Lady towards the waiting raft. Hopefully he wasn't about to make a fool of himself again.

The surge of power lashed against his back like a whip. More blood trickled down his back, cool compared to the heat of Asphodel. Zagreus staggered, almost going down to a knee.

"You are behaving like a child," she snarled, and the entire cavern vibrated with her power.

He took a breath. Straightened. Kept moving. "Now you _really_ sound like them." Zagreus didn't look back as he hopped on the raft. This time it clicked into motion, floating downriver and leaving the Night behind. "I'm going to find my mother. Try and stop me if you want."

Lady Nyx didn't call him back.

* * *

Zagreus's sword cleaved through the witch's skull. She shrieked and dissolved, the spell at her fingertips flickering out uncast. Motion in the corner of his eye alerted him just in time to duck a flask of something that burned green. It exploded where he'd been standing, leaving a fresh scorch mark on the earth. More enemies circled around. About half of them still glowed with deep purple armor. The others he'd battered sufficiently to wear them down. There was still a lot of them. 

Instinct had control and kept him dancing, dodging and weaving as the attacks came in. He swung his sword in a wide arc, Ares' power stretched out to double its reach. Three of his enemies went down before it clanged to a stop against one of the armored ones. He rolled and barely missed a skeletal fist cracking down on his head.

_"I'm going to find my mother. Try and stop me if you want."_

Maybe mouthing off to the Night herself hadn't been his wisest choice ever.

Another shade dissolved under his blade and he held ready, not moving for the rafts until a long minute had passed without any new enemies appearing. He'd learned that painful lesson early. It was only getting more important as he got deeper in. Enemies were getting thicker, and the islands smaller. He wasn't sure if the Underworld itself was somehow arranging that, or if it was just poor luck. Surely if the Night could control the Underworld in that much detail, they wouldn't have needed a guard dog, right?

Twenty breaths passed before Zagreus risked lowering his guard to scoop up the obols dropped by the double-departed. Then he dragged himself onto the next raft and sat. Keeping his balance against the steady bob of the watcher was too much effort. He accepted the small burns and waited for it to take him where it would.

Everything ached. The head wound he'd taken earlier had gotten a friend, and he was pretty sure he'd broken at least one finger trying to punch one of the ones in the armor before he'd figured out what it was. He'd lost track of how long he'd been in Asphodel. Logic said it couldn't have been a literal eternity, but it certainly felt like it. Battles blurred together into a crush of breaking bone, screaming enemies and occasional flares of pain when he didn't duck in time. One island after another, one fight after another, without any way to measure the time. If he'd had any hopes left of getting in, finding his mother and escaping unnoticed, they shattered again and again.

When his raft finally bumped to a stop, Zagreus pushed to his feet and lifted his sword to face... a wall

It _was_ a wall. A single, solid piece of stone that rose up out of the ground and vanished into the shadows above. Over on the far side, a set of stairs led towards the familiar sliding doors he'd grown accustomed to in Elysium. A promontory framed by decorative pillars overlooked the vast expanse of the magma fields, and the only raft in sight was the one he'd arrived on. He must have done it. He'd crossed all of Asphodel.

And _still_ hadn't found any pomegranate trees. _Damn it._

The shades floating in the magma gave him mildly curious looks. They were all in their disembodied forms. None of the witches, skeletons, gorgons or other monstrosities he'd faced down. Safe. At least for the moment. He sank to the ground, not particularly caring that it was only a little cooler than the river. All he needed was a moment of rest, and then he'd be on his way.

Or maybe a nap. It had been a long time since he'd slept. The entire side of his face ached. He was fairly certain he was developing a black eye.

"Ah- _hem_ ," a whiny, nasal voice said from over his shoulder. "Hey, boyo, you don't look so good. Feelin' a little alive there?"

Zagreus drew his sword and twisted, in spite of the pain in his ribs. Then he blinked. The shade was... well, a shade. Mostly a bundle of shadow in the vague shape of a person covered by a draping cloak. Hair poked out from the hood in sharp line of smoke, and there was a hint of a face somewhere in the shadows.

He lowered his sword warily. "I am a little alive. I think. Being dead isn't supposed to hurt this much."

"Ain't nobody supposed to be alive down here. Though you're closer to dead than not. Up you get." A shadowed arm slid under the draping robe and shoved at his shoulder. There was no body to give it force, but Zagreus went along with the motion anyway, just to avoid the altogether creepy sensation of a spirit running through him. Together, they heaved him to his feet, and then helped him balance when the ground swayed tried to move out from under his feet.

"So, uh... what you doin' down here, anyway?" The shade kept busy brushing rock and dirt off him. Or acting like it, anyway. Physical grime was unsurprisingly resistant to spiritual cleanup. "We don't get many like you around these parts."

"It's a long story." Zagreus squinted through an eye that was increasingly swollen. That might have been honest concern in the shade's voice, though it was so nasal that it was hard to really be certain. "You haven't seen any pomegranate trees around here, have you?"

"Oh, _loads_." Just as Zagreus's heart started to rise, the shade continued with, "Trees just love bein' set on fire. Does 'em right good, burnin' to cinders and all that. Builds character."

The ground had stopped moving enough for Zagreus to stand on his own, without having the pretense of incorporeal aid to help him balance. He did so, and used the additional space to glare. "You could have just said no."

"Where's the fun in that?" The more they talked, the more physical the shade seemed. Glowing red eyes had started to appear in the hood when it turned just right, and their movements were accompanied by the sound of bone on rock.

"You do have a point. Well, speaking of fun, I need to go fight my way through Tartarus I suppose. Thank you for your help." He took a step, and before he'd even shifted his weight they were in front of him again, blocking the path to the door.

"Uh, I don't think I can let you do that." Somewhere under the draping fabric of the cloak, there was a shrug. "I got a job to do. Sorry."

"You don't even have a body!"

"I can be a very formidable opponent!" The shade pointedly looked him up and down. Their eyes had become completely visible, and were also incredibly unimpressed. "And you don't look like you've got much crap left to get beat out of you, pal. Didn't run into any fountains out there, I take it?"

A memory of more than one cool, refreshing-seeming trap flashed through Zagreus's memory. He hadn't touched it. It had seemed too good to be real. They'd peppered Elysium too, which had seemed natural, but what sort of magma-flooded nightmare had randomly placed rest stops?

Asphodel, apparently.

Zagreus rubbed his face. He regretted it immediately when his various bruises protested. The very next fountain he saw, he was going to try it, and damn the risk. "I don't want to fight you, but I need to get through that door."

Some of the others who were lounging in the magma had taken notice of the show happening along the wall. They eased over, obviously trying to listen in. Zagreus's friend—foe?—eyed them warily and lowered their voice. "If you really gotta, I suppose I could be persuaded to look the other way..."

"You mean like a bribe."

"Whoa whoa _whooooa_!" Skeletal hands waved in the universal sign for _slow down_. "Bribe's such a harsh word. I mean more like a—a kickback. Somethin' of value that you could use to pay me to look the other way?"

"That is _literally_ the definition of the word 'bribe'!" Zagreus raised his voice enough to make sure that the nearby observers could hear.

He got his reward when the Greedy Shade grabbed his wrist and tugged him in closer, towards the door and away from their curious listeners. "Well look who owns a dictionary!" they hissed under what might have been called their breath, if they'd had any. "But hey, look, if you don't wanna pay, I could just head right on down t' have a talk with Lord Hades and let everyone know you're on your way down. I'm sure they won't go settin' bigger and scarier guys than me on your tail once they know where you are."

"How do I even know you're actually a guard?" Zagreus demanded, holding his indignation tight and channeling Queen Hera at her best. "Who assigned you this position? Where is your _supervisor_?"

"I... uh..." Those glowing eyes darted around nervously. "Someone's gotta volunteer, ya know? Servin' the good of the realm and all that..."

Zagreus's jaw fell open in utter outrage. "You're trying to extort me!" 

"Is it workin'?"

He looked at the door, then back to the self-appointed guard and all the shades surrounding them. If they'd worked out what was happening, they didn't seem to care. None of them had vanished to go warn Lord Hades again, the way the Lonely Myrmidon had.

There was no guarantee they would stay that way once he was gone. He couldn't even bet the spirit would stay bribed. But there really wasn't much choice. "Fine. What do you want? Money?"

"I got money." The Greedy Shade bent over, eying him like a chunk of meat. Which, Zagreus had to admit, he rather was in comparison. As more and more of the ephemeral grew solid, it became obvious that there was nothing behind the shadows but bone. "You got anything a bit more interestin'? Things get pretty borin' down here."

Heaving an annoyed sigh, Zagreus turned to the small collection of things he'd picked up. Coins and gems were already a no. Pomegranates seemed to be plentiful, in spite of the lack of trees, so he doubted that would be of any interest. All that left was...

His eyes flicked from the bottle, to the shade, and then back to the bottle. There were bound to be bigger battles ahead. Surely Tartarus would have stronger enemies than a single, mouthy spirit. It was a gift worthy of Zeus himself. The denizens of Asphodel would never have had anything so grand. They'd been simple mortals, and then tucked away into an oven for the rest of eternity, to be essentially forgotten by everyone but each other. No one would _ever_ give the likes of them a bottle of Olympus's finest.

Sometimes, Zagreus hated the way his mind worked. He pulled the bottle out of his storage space and held it up. "Alright. I'll make a trade, _but_ —" he held up his hand as the Greedy Shade immediately reached out. "Before we agree, you have to promise to _share it_ with someone. Anyone, I don't care who. It's not as good when you drink it alone."

"What're you talkin' about, it's just booze. You're tryin' to..." The Greedy Shade's voice drifted off as Zagreus shook the bottle gently, letting the amber liquid inside catch the light off the river. Their eyes went wide. "Is that what I think it is?"

The murmur of the watching spirits dropped to awed, hushed hisses. Zagreus could feel their attention on him the way he hadn't before. It tickled the back of his neck and made the hairs stand on end. It felt _hungry_.

"If what you think is that it's ambrosia, then it is." Zagreus twirled the bottle, and a satisfied sigh went up from their audience as it cast golden rainbows across the wall. "Do we have a deal? This bottle for you and your friends, in exchange for your silence."

"Deal, deal! I ain't never seen you in my life, pal, just give it here—" The Greedy Shade lunged, grabbing at the prize. Zagreus let go and danced backwards to avoid the sudden crush of shades as they surged in from the magma. As far as he could see, the bottle never came uncorked. They passed it through them without ever touching a drop.

Still, it seemed to have an effect. Happy giggles rose from the crowd, and someone started singing off-key. Several others joined in with more heart than skill. Spirits poured out of the river, each reaching for their taste. Twenty, fifty, a hundred. Far more than the little sliver of land could reasonably hold. Zagreus quickly lost track as even the shades seemed to give up on the illusion of solidity. They blurred together into a single, heaving mass limbs and former-flesh.

The specter of a large, multi-colored ball bounced by.

At least no one was going to be reporting him. By the looks of things, if anyone tried reporting to Lord Hades they'd end up halfway to the surface instead. There were worse ways to ensure safe passage than by making everyone too happy to care.

Zagreus turned back to the door, meaning to slip off while the party was still getting started. When he approached, though, it stayed firmly closed. The runes hadn't lit at all, and there was no image in the sign overhead.

Exasperated, he turned back to the crowd. "Hey! How do I open the door?"

At first no one seemed to notice. Then a rolling blob with dark hair that might have been the Greedy Shade fell halfway out of the party. "I dunno!" they yelled over the increasing noise. A drum had started, and everything writhed in time to it. Inexplicably, it made both his head and ribs ache in time to the beat. "How'd you get the other ones to open? You should try—whoops gotta go—" Something tugged, and the shade vanished back into the pulsing pit of beings.

"Helpful of you," Zagreus muttered, turning back to the door. The truth was, he hadn't been sure how he'd opened the others. They'd just opened. He'd sort of assumed that they were supposed to. That was what doors did, after all.

Doors on Olympus did, at least. And, he assumed, other places. Maybe not so much in the tangled halls of the Underworld, which seemed—and likely were—specifically designed to thwart both escape and intrusion. Maybe the strange part was that the other doors opened at all.

Zagreus crossed his arms. There was something about it. The mess of it all, the _trickiness._ The rooms shifted and the ceiling hid in shadow, denying any markers or ways to find a path without the river. It was practically a labyrinth—

His thoughts pulled up short.

Could it be that easy?

He reached for his cloak, which he'd folded away when he'd first set foot in Asphodel. Someone tried to jostle him and ended up jostling through him. Asphodel, or at least that end of it, was getting crowded. A few shades yelled complaints as his cloak passed through them when he settled it around his shoulders and pinned it back in place. The shining threads woven into the cloth glimmered in the light of the river.

Gift in place, Zagreus reached out. As soon as he touched the door, the runes lit up. It slid open with a wash of cooler air. The tunnel led down into faintly lit darkness, an endless parade of steps down into gods-only-knew.

Gods, and Zagreus. He'd already been through Elysium and Asphodel. There were only so many other places to check.

Relief was even more refreshing than the brief breeze had been. "Thank you, Lady Ariadne."

With one last glance back at the festival that had become of his handiwork, Zagreus charged onward, and downward, towards the lowest pits of the Underworld.


	9. The House of Hades: Premeditation

"Explain, precisely, what you meant when you said that _you lost track of the intruder on the dance floor_ ," Lord Hades growled. Each word had the heavy chop of a blade coming down on some unworthy victim's neck. His enormous eyebrows knotted together as he stared down at the shades that hovered before his throne. If a floating set of revolving eyeballs could be said to cower, then they were. One set hovered higher than the rest, as if taking the speaker position. The nerves that dangled from the eyeballs twitched anxiously, and the dark abyss of its pupils stayed locked their lord even as they spun.

Thanatos had never actually seen his Lord _disconcerted_. Enraged, stern, focused, once regretful, yes, but such a look of pure confusion was a new and somewhat upsetting sight.

Near the entry hall, Thanatos and Hypnos hovered closed together, the better to bear witness to the catastrophe as it unfolded. Few others remained to provide it. Dusa had still not returned from hiding. Achilles stood guard, but his eyes strayed to the waiting Patroclus too often for Thanatos to believe in his vigilance. The Queen attended to the needs of plaintiff shades in the garden, including King Theseus, leaving her husband free to defend the realm while depriving said realm of her steadying hand on said husband's temper. Even the attendant ghosts who generally filled the hall had vanished, no doubt some long-disused sense of self-preservation taking control.

Worst of all, Lady Nyx had not yet returned. Presumably she was doing her duty, as she always had. Thanatos wondered if her view of her duty would agree with Lord Hades' view of it in this instance. She had always said she served the Underworld and the House foremost before their its Lord.

"Do you think he's in Tartarus?" Hypnos whispered. He floated at roughly the same level as Thanatos's shoulder, curled up so he could use his knees as a writing surface. Not that he was. What Thanatos could see of his brother's scroll mostly appeared to be sketches of the Bull of Minos in varying poses and with extremely limited amounts of clothing. 

"Who?"

"The visitor."

"The intruder, you mean." But Thanatos had to roll the question around in his head. If Asphodel had fallen into... well, it could hardly be called ruin. The Phlegethon had ensured there was little left to destroy. Disarray, perhaps. Regardless, it had most definitely failed to be any sort of barrier. The only place after that was Tartarus. And yet... "If the person he's searching for was the sort to be sent to Tartarus, I doubt he would be searching."

Hypnos's quill flashed, adding flowers to the Bull's mane. "I dunno. People can be _pretty_ _weird_ about family. I mean, look at us!"

"What _about_ us?"

His brother started on another drawing. It appeared to be a study of the muscles necessary to support a bovine head on human shoulders. He hummed happily, completely lost in whatever was—or, more likely, wasn't—going on in his head. "I mean, if I died, you'd come find me, right?"

"If you died you would reappear in the Pool of Styx, just like the rest of us."

"But what if I didn't?"

Thanatos's stomach twisted with a sinking, sick suspicion that he wasn't going to enjoy where the conversation was headed. He kept his eyes fixed on the throne, so Hypnos was only barely visible in his periphery. "If you were dumb enough to die and didn't return home, I would leave you to rot in whatever forgotten corner of the Underworld you washed up in."

"You would come find me," Hypnos repeated with a soft certainty. He never looked up from his paper, but Thanatos thought his twin was smiling. "You'd never let me just _vanish_. That'd be terrible, just going away with no sign of where I went or what happened to me. No way you'd let that go. If the visitor's mother was mortal, why would he let her go either?"

"It's different for mortals—" Thanatos started, and then cursed silently when Hypnos's hypothetical smile turned into a beam he could feel like a blast of sunlight aimed directly at the side of his face. He resolutely refused to look in his brother's direction. "I would still let you rot, just for the record. But mortals are supposed to let go when their time comes, even the ones who are related to gods. That's how it works for them. It's not healthy for them to hold on; look what happened to Orpheus."

"Maybe this one will become our new court musician!" Hypnos pumped his fist. Long, long experience with siblinghood let Thanatos dodge it with only a slight lean away and an annoyed sigh. "We could use another one. Especially since Orpheus refuses to sing."

"... I doubt that will be the case. Very much." Thanatos sighed and drifted a few feet away, out of range of Hypnos's inexplicable flailing and increasingly lewd art. Lord Hades' spies had floated away to hide, and the Lord was still at his desk, turning over parchment like the secret to what was happening might have been hidden in there. A new line of shades waited off to the side, their limbs piled high with scrolls. Earlier their Lord had ordered his assistants to draw up records of his brothers' deceased paramours. The results of their search must have been ready. "Do you really think the intruder will be in Tartarus by now?"

"Well, he already went through Elysium and Asphodel."

"Hm."

Thanatos rubbed his thumb against the haft of his scythe. He hated the feeling of waiting. It wasn't his style. There was always a task to be done in the Underworld or, lacking that, dying mortals to bring the good word. Death was never idle. And yet, it was more than that. The internal itch, the _need_ that had driven him home had only gotten stronger.

_Go_ , it said. _There's work to do. Collect them. Collect him._

Even the thought felt akin to treason. It was abandoning his post, at the very least. But like his mother, he had a greater purpose than the House, or its occupant. Never before had the two come in conflict. His eyes flicked about, from Lord Hades in his throne to the open doors of the garden. No one in the House was calling for him. No one demanded his assistance. Like all the others, he was simply waiting. And that was no longer tolerable.

Duty called, and he was ready.

Power collected around him and the air dimmed. "Give Lord Hades my regrets. I have business to attend."

Hypnos's head whipped up. For the first time in a long time, his eyes were wide open. "What? Not you too!"

It felt good to see the complete terror on his brother's face as he realized that he was going to be left alone to deal with their Lord's temper. Maybe it would wake him up, for once. Then Darkness took hold, and the familiar rot and chains of Tartarus materialized.

Time to get to work.


	10. Tartarus: Homecoming Queen

Zagreus stepped out into the final layer of the accessible pits of Hell feeling like a new man. Or at least like a less-mortally-wounded man. Trying the fountain on the way down had done wonders to improve his mood and, hopefully, his likelihood of survival. Some of the wounds hadn't closed entirely, but enough of them had to make a difference. The back of his head had stopped bleeding, and most of his blisters had vanished. All that was left were a few scrapes that he could ignore.

Tartarus was as different from Asphodel as Asphodel had been from Elysium. The room he stepped out into was roughly square, lined with pillars and cracked stone. Manacles hung from the visible parts of the ceiling and walls. Weeping statues were built into awkward corners, stains and chips on the stone mimicking the effects of torture. A general sense of oppressively eternal misery hung in the air, like clouds before a snowstorm. All in all, it looked exactly like what he would have expected: _Stygian._

But the greenish hue that broke the shadows was gentler on the eyes than the red glare of Asphodel's magma or the fractured rainbows of Elysium. And while there were manacles and chains, no one actually seemed to be strung up in them. A few spike traps and pressure plates littered the ground, but they weren't precisely hidden. As long as he looked where he stepped, he'd be fine. A door like those in Elysium stood prominently on the far wall, impossible to miss.

But of course, there was horror. Not in manacles or statuary, but in the people. Tormented souls cowered around the edges of the chamber. They huddled together in protective clumps, their shadowed faces turned away from him, heavy cloth draping their forms, when they had them. They didn't look or acknowledge him at all as he walked past towards the only door in sight. It was Elysium all over again, but at least the dead there had looked him in the eye. These only flinched as he stepped past.

Zagreus tried not to think of his mother as one of them. It was hard enough seeing other people that way, as limp, lifeless lumps, with the personality beaten out of them. Tartarus was supposed to be for the worst mortal kind had to offer, the irredeemable and wicked, those who had nothing to offer their fellows but misery. Knowing that any who suffered in Tartarus likely deserved their fate did nothing to make that fate easier to witness.

The next room was much the same, though a slightly different shape, and featuring an open balcony to one side. A few despairing shades clung together at its edges and didn't acknowledge him. There was more manacles, and more artwork that had clearly been designed to induce dread in the viewer. Ornamental gaps had been scattered about the paving stones like decorative death-traps. Zagreus glanced down as he passed one and then nearly tripped over his own feet. The bloody gleam of the Styx shined through, as if the room had been built directly atop it.

In the Temple the river had been red and frothy, but at least it had run like water. By comparison, it practically oozed in Tartarus, as different as arterial spray was to a spring rain. Coagulated clumps of river clung to the rock, and high points in the flow were marked by a crust like a scab.

No red-tinted water, that. It was definitely blood. 

Blood that, somehow, still had fish in it. They showed themselves as little darting shadows under the surface that anyone who'd grown up with Poseidon as an uncle could have spotted in an instant. Zagreus wasn't going to ask too many questions, but there were times he had to wonder if his family had really thought things through. Fish in a river of blood just seemed unlikely.

"Now all I need is a pomegranate tree." Zagreus dipped a toe down into the river, and wrinkled his nose; it was _warm_. He shook the excess off his foot and waited for the remainder to freeze over so he could crack it off. It dripped freely, but the ice never came.

Frowning, he plopped down next to the Styx and pulled his foot up to inspect. It was cold, of course. He'd cooled off again only a few minutes after he'd gotten away from the red-hot Phlegethon. Snow once again dusted his shoulders, and he no longer felt like he was on the verge of melting into a puddle.

Maybe he was a little less cold than usual, though. His feet were pale, but they hadn't really regained their usual blue undertone. He wiped the liquid blood off and set his foot gently back on the floor. The cobbles frosted a little. The effect stopped about an inch or two out from the skin, thin enough to scrape off with a fingernail. He reached up to touch his laurel and found the leaves supple and fresh under his fingers. A loose one pulled free turned out to be colored a brisk red and gold, more autumn than winter.

That was... probably not good. The only times he'd ever been without his grandmother's power on him had been when she was punishing him somehow. He didn't think that was what it was, though. Punishments were usually accompanied by hailstorms and cold vortexes that threatened to freeze his blood in his veins. Just letting go didn't seem like her. She never let _anything_ go.

But it was possible that somewhere directly overhead on the surface there was a winter storm happening, and it just couldn't reach him down under the earth. That was an even stranger thought than Demeter suddenly being _nice_. Her power rivaled that of Lord Zeus. The thought of being beyond her reach...

He shivered and then forcefully shoved the thought away. No matter what it was, there was nothing he could do about it. Eventually he'd be back on Olympus, and everything would be back to normal, hailstorms and all. It wasn't like he'd ever expected to get away without punishment. He'd just have to make certain his mother was bundled up before they left the Temple.

With a determined grunt, Zagreus climbed back onto his feet and looked around. In addition to the gaps in the floor, the room he was in alone had two different doors. Both were signposted with a looming darkness that promised no reward other than a painful death.

One of them _felt_ different, though. Sweeter, like a rose blooming somewhere in his chest. He reached up and touched Aphrodite's petal where it was tucked in his laurel. Without the frost it was a softer spot against his fingers, velvety as opposed to the smooth leaves that it hid away in. When he took a step towards the nicer-seeming exit, it warmed.

"Follow your heart," Zagreus murmured to himself, and headed towards the door. It opened with a smooth glide of some well-oiled mechanism that belied the weight of the stone, showing only a set of stairs and darkness beyond.

Choice made, he charged through.

* * *

Tartarus was no better than Elysium. Aphrodite's guidance led him in what felt like circles, turning corners seemingly at random. Occasionally the pull of the petal seemed to change its mind, and would yank him backwards up a corridor he'd already been down but no longer recognized. When that happened, Zagreus sighed, but obeyed, the memory of Elysium shifting before his eyes a heavy reminder. At least he had guidance.

Doors connected rooms to each other and to dark, narrow passages that were stained by ichor and filled with the terrified muttering of the damned. Those passages, in turn, led to more rooms. Most of them were empty, but some were patrolled by hulking wretches, armed and armored. It was none of the swarms he'd fought in Asphodel, but they still had to be taken down before he could move on.

The longer he was there the more Tartarus rose to meet its reputation. But it was the first place he'd found where the Styx ran red, and the shades of Asphodel had been in seemingly universal agreement that no trees had grown there since long before he'd been born. It was the only lead he had. He had no choice but to follow it, even as it got darker and distinctly creepier.

He passed what must have been hundreds of corridors and chambers, darkened areas with cries of torment audible through stone walls. The crack of whips echoed the loudest, though one door he definitely didn't open had the sizzle of burning meat and a low growl of _murderer_ behind it. Another reeked of old, rotting blood, and the halls around it siunded with a high pitched, gleeful cackle.

Lord Hades' servants enjoyed their work.

The most recent door opened into a wide, mostly square courtyard. Half the area had been utterly demolished, leaving behind a mountainous pile of rubble. About halfway up the mountain a less-ephemeral-than-most shade struggled against a massive boulder. His muscles bulged, tendons and veins standing out in relief as he pushed. Ghostly feet already faltered, unable to find steady purchase against the unstable ground. The man grunted as his hold began to slip, and the boulder wobbled precariously, threatening to tip right over the man on its way back down to the bottom.

"Hold on!" Zagreus moved before the sight entirely finished registering. He dashed up to set a shoulder against the rock, and ignored the flare of a new bruise when he did so. His solid feet dug into the stones better than ghostly ones, but that helped less than he might have expected. It almost felt as though some force were fighting back against him, trying to shove the rock back towards the bottom. He gritted his teeth and hooked his fingers in a cracked ridge of stone. "I've got it for now," he grunted. His shoulders rolled as he locked himself in place. "Steady yourself."

In the corner of his eye he saw the shade stare at him with an expression of wild confusion. "You needn't—" He gave himself a shake and re-seated his own grip. Together they pushed, alternating when one needed to re-position. Step by precarious step the boulder rolled uphill until, finally, it tipped up onto a small divot at the top. It perched there proudly, unsupported by anything but its own weight.

_Click._

The far side of the divot snapped upward, revealing a hidden platform on a spring. He dived out of the way as the boulder tipped back down the hill, crashing and bouncing its way to a rest at the bottom of the hill. An audience of attendant shades applauded politely.

Zagreus stared at the boulder in frustrated horror. " _Why_..."

In contrast, the shade seemed absolutely perky. A grin stretched his broad face as looked down the hill. "I knew there had to be a trick to it. There always is! But that's the very first time Bouldy and I ever made it to the top, thanks to you."

He held out a hand. Chains rattled from his wrist, connected to a solid piece of metal that wrapped around his waist and then vanished off into nothingness that somehow didn't seem like it limited their effectiveness. "The name's Sisyphus. And unless the Fury Sisters recently acquired a new sibling, I don't think you're one of them. Or if you are, you're very bad at your job, if you don't mind my saying so."

"Zagreus." He shook the offered hand automatically. The shade was huge, built like some sort of giant of a mortal. "I'm not one of—them. Just visiting, really. Sisyphus, you said?" 

The shade nodded easily, and Zagreus fought a wince. The boulder really ought to have given it away. "I know that name. My family still talks about you—Lord Ares especially."

"Only bad things, I hope!" Sisyphus shook out his hair and started picking his way back down the slope. If the former mortal king, current tormented soul, was at all upset at hearing that the gods still gossiped about his misdeeds, he did an excellent job hiding it.

Zagreus followed. The boulder had done a number on the slope as it rolled back down, smoothing it in a way that made the path much trickier to navigate. It gave him something to focus on besides the knowledge that he probably just committed some sort of major Underworld faux pas. "Well, yes, actually. Your escapes from... here, I suppose, caused quite a stir. You won't be easily forgotten."

That was an understatement. There'd been a whole season where people stopped freezing and starving to death, and Lord Ares had been forced to cancel three wars due to the lack of casualties. Zeus had been furious that his brother had been so careless as to let a man who'd personally insulted him go. The only people who'd been happy had been Aphrodite—who always enjoyed a post-war uptick in popularity—and Queen Hera, who was happiest when her husband wasn't.

They reached the bottom and Sisyphus gave the boulder a familiar pat. "I would have hoped I would be, by now. Forgotten, that is. Suppose that's its own form of punishment though. I was a right tyrant, and no mistake. I hope that's what the word is, at least?" He turned a hopeful look on Zagreus, who could only nod. It was true enough. Nothing he'd heard had been anything good. Shaming his wife, murdering visitors in his own home, planning to kill his father-in-law...

"You were the absolute worst, sir."

"Good to hear." With a groan and a rattle of chains, Sisyphus leaned against the rock he'd been doomed to push. "So, what's a nice chap like you doing down here? I didn't think Lord Hades was big on visitors. At least, he wasn't back in my day."

Zagreus winced and rubbed the back of his neck where blood was still crusted from his now-healed head wounds. Something itched, down under his skin. He couldn't place it entirely. It was a little like when Artemis would sneak up on him while they were hunting. "They don't know I'm here—or didn't, at least. I think they're on to me now. I'm looking for my mother. You haven't happened to see any pomegranate trees around here, have you?"

The departed king glanced sidelong at the boulder. Something about the cracks and shadows on its rounded face made it seem as if the boulder looked back. "A pomegranate tree? I can't say I have, but if it were me, I'd look around the House. They say the Dread Queen loves those things. Keeps a garden, she does." 

Lord Hades had a _wife_? That was news to Zagreus. The only things he'd ever heard that even hinted in that direction were lamentations from Zeus and Poseidon that their brother hadn't taken up with any of the girls they'd occasionally caused to be sent down to him. Of course, those girls had always been dead, which no doubt put a chill on the matter. Either that or, apparently, Lord Hades had already been married and was actually faithful.

That had him several-up on Zeus.

Dark eyes watched Zagreus process the news, but whatever Sisyphus made of it he kept to himself. Instead, he asked, "Looking for your mother, you said? You must know that's not going to make you the most popular person around these parts. It usually ends very badly for everyone involved. You seem like a decent sort. I'd hate to see you spending the rest of eternity down here with the likes of me."

"The company would be excellent, though." Zagreus tried to pin on a smile, but it wilted after a second. "The truth is, I don't really know what I'm doing. The plan kind of fell apart around the time Lady Nyx made an appearance and they started sending wretches after me."

Something whispered at the edge of Zagreus's hearing, too soft to make out the words.

Sisyphus seemed to hear it. His head cocked for a second, and then he nodded towards the boulder. "Bouldy's right. It's a fool's game, but I suppose we're all allowed a bit of foolishness from time to time. I'm the last person who should tell anyone to give up. You just keep at it and I'm sure you'll work things out if—" 

Sisyphus's voice stumbled to a stop as the already-low lights dimmed and took on a blue tint. Alarm turned his eyes wide and drained the little color that had been in his spectral cheeks.

He shoved at Zagreus's shoulder. "And that's our cue. You should—no, never mind, just go! You don't want to be here when he shows up!"

"Who—"

"Go!" The next push used strength built from pushing boulders to rocket Zagreus forward. "I'll keep him distracted! Good luck!"

The genuine worry in the shade's voice moved Zagreus more than any concern for himself. He darted for the nearest wall and pressed himself against it just as the death knell echoed through the room. A breeze ruffled his hair as the light flickered again and a black-robed figure burst into view, hovering three feet off the ground.

Zagreus hardly dared breathe. He eased to the side, one delicate step at a time. _Please don't see me, please don't see me._

"Where is he?" the man—god?—demanded. He crossed his arms, and the massive blade of his scythe gleamed in the greenish torchlight. His back stayed towards Zagreus and his hood was up. Not that his face was necessary. Menace radiated off of him like an aura.

Sisyphus scrambled upright, dusting off hands and keeping his eyes locked on the figure in front of him. "Why hello, and a lovely day or night to you sir. I was just taking a brief break. Did you hear the news? Bouldy and I got all the way up the hill for the very first time."

Even though he knew better, Zagreus's feet slowed. Aphrodite's petal warmed, urging him back. It sang in his head, made his heart flutter. There was something familiar...

In a flash the scythe came up. Its tip pressed into Sisyphus's jaw, sending a trickle of dark ichor down his throat. "Don't toy with me, shade. I know the intruder was here." 

Then again, the shortest route wasn't necessarily the safest. _Better not chance it._

He edged over to the nearest door, which opened with silent ease at his approach. The last thing Zagreus heard as the door slid closed behind him was Sisyphus asking, in tones so innocent even Zagreus almost believed him, "I can't imagine who you might be talking about, Lord Death, sir. It's just me and good ol' Bouldy, same as always."

* * *

Zagreus ignored the constant pull of Aphrodite's gift as he charged blindly through the halls and rooms of Tartarus. The damned hardly looked up as he rushed between and sometimes through them. He ran and ran until the petal reluctantly gave up its backwards pull and started leading him forward again instead. The song felt sulky.

"I don't know what that was about, but it wasn't helping," he told it as he staggered through another rune-lit door into a room the size of a feast-hall, set with thick columns and numerous balconies that overlooked the Styx. As if taunting, spike traps had been set precisely where someone might want to stand to watch the river flow by. At the sound of his entrance, a set of hulking wretches armed with clubs looked up, grunted, and started gliding towards him.

Heaving a sigh, Zagreus readied his sword. "Oh, good. Company."

It was short work. The swarms of Asphodel hadn't followed him to Tartarus, and it was really only the large numbers that gave him trouble. Two were nothing. He dodged behind the wretches and ran his sword through what used to be a rib cage, then danced out of range when they turned around. They telegraphed their blows in large, slow swings, making them far easier to dodge than they needed to be. Ichor splashed across the paving stones as Zagreus carved into their bared bellies. Chunks of ephemeral flesh scattered to the winds until there wasn't enough left to hold his attackers together and they vanished in a shimmer of darkness.

Alone again, he leaned against one of the pillars and pressed a hand to his ribs. His breath still felt like it was coming short, and his heart pounded in his throat. The air in the Underworld was different from the air above it, though he couldn't quite say how. Thinner, maybe. Definitely staler. He'd never gotten out of breath so easily while running around Olympus.

He'd never been chased by Death on Olympus either, though.

Lord Hades had obviously given up on soldiers and had moved on to siege ballista. It had been bound to happen, Zagreus assumed. Once he'd been found out, there was no chance they'd just let him wander around until he found his mother and got them both out. 

It didn't matter. Lord Hades could send Death. He could send a Cyclops, a herd of Centaurs or even the reanimated remains of a Titan. Zagreus would find a way through. He hadn't gotten all the way down to Tartarus just to walk away because things got hard. Though, if what Sisyphus had said about pomegranate trees in the Queen's garden was accurate, it might be about to get a lot trickier than just having a force of nature after him.

He'd worry about it when he got there.

About the time his heart had eased and breathing left less of a stitch in his side, the gentle trill of Aphrodite's guidance went silent. Zagreus reached back to cup the petal. "Are you defective?" he asked. It just fluttered against his fingertips and then went still again.

Maybe he was already on the right path. It didn't feel right, but it was the only explanation that he had for the boon's increasing unreliability.

Unless, like his grandmother, Aphrodite just wasn't as powerful in the Underworld.

That _was_ going to be a problem, if Olympus was somehow limited by the miles of dirt overhead. He could do without Aphrodite's help, or even Artemis's, but as far as he could tell Ariadne's cloak was the only thing opening doors. If that stopped working, he was going to have to figure out how to build a boat in a hurry.

While he considered his worst-case options, the lights in the room dimmed.

Zagreus leaped to his feet and dashed for one of the open balconies. No time for a clean exit. The door was too far, and Death had shown up too quickly last time. He hopped over the still-active spike traps and swung around to cling to the far side of one of the supporting pillars. A decorative ledge provided a toe hold and old, unrepaired cracks in the column gave his fingers something to cling to. It was just enough to keep him dry. The Styx flowed high near the top of its banks. The body-heat of it wafted up against the back of his bare heels. He was so close to the surface that a fish of some sort looked seriously like it might try for a nibble.

As it had in Sisyphus's chamber, a bell tolled. He clutched close to his hiding place and waited. There was a gentle tap, like a blade brushing against stone. No footsteps, but there wouldn't be. He wasn't even certain he'd know when it was safe to move. 

Aphrodite's gift chose that time to start pulsing again. Its song rang in his ears with the drum of a heartbeat gone wild. Something seized a spot in his gut marked _anxiety_ and twisted ruthlessly. His fingers shook, and breathing grew difficult again. Muscles he'd barely been aware of cramped. Zagreus gritted his teeth, closed his eyes and hoped he didn't have to run.

It couldn't have been more than a few minutes. It felt like forever. Eventually, though, there came another flicker of lights and a gentle sound of displaced air. When the knot in his stomach dissolved he risked a peek around the edge of the pillar. The room was empty, and so he gladly fell back into it, dodging the trap again as he spilled himself onto the nice, firm floor.

The petal had gone cold again.

"No more listening to my heart," Zagreus muttered, rubbing out the aches in his poor, abused toes. Grandmother's power had definitely diminished. There wasn't even any frost left on his heels. It was the weirdest thing, to rub his foot against the ground and not feel the sensation through a thin layer of ice. Good though. Warm, like it had been in Asphodel, except without the constant blisters.

Once his feet stopped cramping, he climbed back on them with a hop and headed for the exit. "Got to keep moving."

He could do it. He knew he could. All he had to do was get all the way through the worst pits of the Underworld, find the House of Hades and the Queen's Garden, figure out where his mother was, snatch her out from under a bunch of Chthonic noses and then work out how to get them both back up to Olympus without either of them meeting any sort of grisly and-or permanent fate.

Oh, and dodge a searching Death as he did it.

Easy.

* * *

Surprising absolutely no one, not even Zagreus, Death was a persistent bastard.

Zagreus kept moving, mostly away from anywhere Aphrodite's gift tried to lead him. The damned thing seemed determined to see him dead or firmly escorted back to Olympus to face the consequences of his actions.

After the first near-miss, there was no chance for a break. Any time he lingered in a room for more than a few minutes, the tell-tell flicker of the lights would start up and he'd have to dive for whatever cover or door was at hand. More than once he cut it so close that he just had to take the hits on his way and make directly for the next room, without any time to defend himself. He collected wounds like prizes: a slice to the leg here, a bruise there. Artemis's gift, like the others, seemed to be fading. There was no other explanation for how quickly death tracked him down each and every time.

Thank all the gods, Ariadne's held strong. Every door he approached opened. It was all that kept him going.

Room configurations changed constantly. As best Zagreus could tell, he was angling deeper underground. A few spots had stairs, and they never took him up. The Styx, when he saw it, also seemed to be flowing in the same direction he was headed. It might have been an illusion. More than once he ran into a space with signs that he'd already been there pained in red across the floor. After a while one decrepit, depressing chamber blurred into the next. 

The halls grew emptier as he traveled, and had fewer options, even bad ones. The one he was in just then was the plainest yet. No turns, no corners, no loops. Only a single, straight stretch of crumbling stone corridor, featuring the door he'd come out of and a single door at the far end.

It felt like he was being herded.

Zagreus paused ten feet out from the last door and rubbed his hip where a witch had landed a lucky blow. His grip on his sword was slick with blood and ichor. Some of the injuries he'd picked up in Asphodel had reopened, and there hadn't been another fountain chamber to heal them. He was far from his best condition. A singular exit, with no other choices, promised nothing good.

"No way out but forward." His voice echoed in the narrow hall, bouncing back at him like a personal attack. It sounded even tired. A nap would have been really nice just then. But if he was being herded, then there was no time for naps. The wolf was at his heels, and he had to keep going and hope what came next was something he could survive. He stepped forward.

The final door lit up, its signpost flashing blood red as it slid open. Aphrodite's petal _burned_. He could feel it hot against the back of his skull, as if it could force him forward by its will alone. Zagreus hesitated, and its power tried to drop his heart down to his knees.

He gritted his teeth and crossed the threshold.

Instead of a chamber what lay beyond the door was a a bridge that stretched directly over the heart of the Styx, which flowed on all sides and—judging by the holes cut in the paving—under it as well. More of the same ominous columns soared up to support the roof, where leering stone faces were limned by dull green light before they vanished into the ever-present shadows. Fruit-heavy pomegranate trees peeked over stone walls. Just past that the bridge came to a sharp end where a shadowed figure waited, scythe arcing over his head like a broken moon.

Not that Zagreus had needed the hint.

Part of him, the part that occasionally made good decisions, was ready to turn around. He'd reached the end of the road. Even if he somehow got past, even if he somehow found his mother, Lord Hades knew Zagreus was literally at his doorstep. Forget Death, he wasn't going to get out of Hell alive.

The rest of him was felt _alive_. He was exhausted beyond anything he'd ever been, wounded in a dozen places. But his goal was _right there_. He didn't need Aphrodite's questionably accurate gift to guide him any longer. All he had to do was reach out and finish it.

He scrubbed the blood off his palm and resettled his grip on his sword hilt. His feet had lost whatever hint of frost they'd once had, so his footing was secure. If he stayed ready, moved fast, he might be able to get in a few blows before the wrong end of that scythe had his head off.

"So, I guess that's the palace? Or whatever you call it around here, huh?" Zagreus cracked his shoulders as he walked forward. "I beg your pardon, but I have to ask you to let me pass. I have an..." His footsteps hesitated as the angle of the shadows lifted, revealing the face under the hood. "Than."

A thousand little details came together like clash of blades, and Zagreus felt like an idiot for not having realized something was wrong sooner. He'd only met Than twice, but each time he'd been as out of place as a sunbather in a snowstorm. In the deepest pits of Tartarus, though, he blended right in. The gentler light made his pale skin and hair shine, and the fine fabric of his clothes flowed gently as he hovered off the ground. Even his eyes _fit._ Not light brown. They were brilliant gold, and glowing in the darkness.

Zagreus swallowed a laugh. If that started, it wasn't going to stop. "Wow. I have to say, I did not see this coming."

For his part, Than— _no, Thanatos, how did I not realize that?_—looked as if he'd had the same wind knocked out of him. "Zag. I—our informant told us the intruder was a god." Zagreus swore he could actually feel Death's eyes on him, tracking from one wound to the next. "You bleed red."

"So did my mother." Zagreus took a defensive stance, sword at the ready. "I'm not leaving here without her."

"Yes, you will." Two bare feet settled on the ground with the faintest of taps. Death's scythe swiveled around to face him. The giant purple eye at its heart pulsed with power. "Go home, Zag. Let the dead stay dead. You don't have to join them."

"Easy for you to say." The standoff continued, with neither of them taking the first swing. Zagreus fought to keep his sword steady, even when the blade wavered with fatigue. He didn't have much left in him to give, and Thanatos hadn't even taken a fighting stance. He just stood there, like he had all the time in the world. And maybe he did.

Something splashed in the Styx. Thanatos's eyes darted that way, distracted for just a heartbeat, and Zagreus took the opening. He darted in, sword coming around in a sweep to catch his opponent's exposed side. A bare inch before the blow landed, the scythe handle blocked his blow. It twisted, shoving him backwards. Zagreus rolled with it, coming so close to the blade that a lock of his hair was sheered off, drifting away on the breeze to be swallowed by the Styx.

A dark circle formed under his feet, forcing him to keep moving. He was barely in time. Just as he passed the outer ring, the hum of power spiked and the circle closed with a flare of purple energy.

Zagreus swallowed. It wasn't hard to guess what that would have done. No close combat then. Or, at least, not a lot of it.

Thanatos was still exactly in the same spot. His hood had fallen back, but it was the only change. He hadn't even bothered keeping his weapon at the ready. "I told you. Go home." The scythe pulsed, and another, smaller series of circles appeared underfoot, forcing Zagreus to scramble backwards. "You think you can fight Death?"

"I think I am fighting Death, thank you!" It was a constant dance, staying out of the death traps. Thanatos's power pushed him away again and again until his back pressed against the door and he had to resort to using the corners to dodge it. The few times he risked leaping forward, one of the larger circles appeared, too wide to run across, and forced him back again.

It took Zagreus far, far too long to realize none of the blows were landing. Surely they could have. The bridge was narrow. It wouldn't have taken much to force Zagreus to dodge into his own doom. Just some timing, and patience. Thanatos didn't look like he was even trying, though. If anything, he looked bored. His arms crossed across his chest, and he just stood at the end of the walkway as if he'd rather be anywhere else.

_Gods give me strength._ Zagreus threw himself forward. When the inevitable circle appeared, he kept going, running across it as fast as he could. It still wasn't quick enough. The power in the circle rose with a flash, threatening to envelop him while he was still only halfway through.

Across the way, Thanatos's eyes went wide. His scythe twitched, and the circle vanished underfoot.

Dispelled.

Zagreus bared his teeth and lunged. Thanatos stumbled to the side, barely dodging the blow. He took a step to the left, guarding the movement with a swing that forced Thanatos even farther to his right.

"You're not even trying to kill me!" he accused, swinging his blade in a downward arc that was met by a casual twirl of the scythe. The tip caught Zagreus's shoulder, sending a fresh, hot wash of blood across his skin.

"Maybe you're not worth killing!" Thanatos snarled back. "Go home, Zag!"

"After I've found my mother, _Than_!"

They circled one another. Finally, it was an actual fight. No more circles of power appeared underfoot, but the scythe's blade gleamed wickedly with eagerness enough to offset its wielder's reluctance. Thanatos stayed on the defensive, but that didn't mean he didn't get in his own blows. Every block resulted in another cut, a slice across his forehead, one on his thigh or knuckles. They stung, but none of them were even remotely lethal.

That pissed Zagreus off even more than losing would have. He wasn't even being toyed with, he was just being kept busy and worn down, presumably so he could be scooped up like a toddler and dumped back on Olympus. Hard as he tried, though, he barely landed anything. A knick here, a scrape there. It wasn't even on the same level as the minimal damage he was taking.

"Fight me, damn you!" Zagreus ducked down and lunged. His shoulder caught Thanatos in the ribs and sent him rocketing back into a pillar. It cracked from the impact. The air flickered, and Thanatos vanished.

The constant, low-level compulsion he'd been feeling from Aphrodite's petal whipped around so suddenly it felt like a kick in the gut. Breath choked out of him as Zagreus staggered around to find Thanatos behind him, scythe held horizontally to block a follow-up attack Zagreus didn't make.

Blood trickled down from one of the cuts on his head, hot copper on his lips. He licked it off and repositioned himself away from the pillar. The gates Thanatos had been guarding were at his back, now, but still the warm calling came from the front, where Death stood at the ready.

Zagreus grinned. _When in Hell..._

He rushed forward in a mad, reckless dive. Thanatos blocked him, the way he had every time before, and Zagreus kept going, taking another swing, and then another. He pushed himself until his muscles burned and he'd collected so many little cuts that it felt like he'd been swimming in the Styx. His focus stayed on the blade, waiting for it to swing around, waiting for—

_There!_

It moved forward to block as Zagreus's sword curved upward. Zagreus twisted and lunged—to the side.

"What? No!"

The scythe carved through him as if he didn't even have bones. His ribs were no obstacle. Meat and soft flesh gave way even easier. He thought he felt the tip come out through his back—there was a sudden damp warmth between his shoulder blades that he couldn't source. Blood filled his mouth, and his knees buckled.

Thanatos's shocked expression filled the world, blocking out the roof of the chamber and all its terrible carvings. "You idiot, you—you didn't have to do that—" There were hands clutching at him, ghosts of sensation pressed against the wound. They faded, taking Than's face with them.

Wet heat rose up and dragged him down into unconsciousness.

* * *

The first, and most important thing Zagreus noticed as he opened his eyes was the darkness. Stars might have shined in it, but he couldn't see them. Liquid heat held him suspended, true warmth that sank into his bones like nothing before. Even the searing heat of Asphodel had only reached so far. Unlike the few times he'd come close to drowning, there was no pressure in his lungs, though he definitely couldn't breathe.

He thought he might have been dead. If he was, he was going to complain about false advertising. The dead were supposed to be in the boat, not under it.

Zagreus twisted in slow circles until he found a place where the darkness was a little lighter. Redder. There was no way to tell if it was up or down. It was a direction, though, and he stretched for it, kicking his feet until the black gave way to scarlet and then to air as he broke the surface.

A dozen faces, living and otherwise, turned to stare at him as he dragged himself up the steps. No familiar weight rested at his hip. He assumed his sword had been left back where he'd died. Had to hope, at least, or Ares would kill him for losing it. Blood—the Styx?—flowed off his skin without leaving so much as a damp spot or a stain. He shook a few lingering drops from his hair and looked around.

Drab gray stonework and ominous skull tiles greeted him as he stepped out of the pool. It looked like someone's macabre fantasy of what _ominous_ meant, played out in terms of architecture. Sparks flicked around his feet, which had taken on a glow similar to the Phlegethon, and that was... he wasn't sure what to think of that. Death changed a man, maybe.

And, of course, there were the shades. Quite a few shades, most of them in the spiritual nude, all of them watching him. The Lonely Myrmidon stood against a wall, staring at him with a thoughtful expression. Another person floated nearby, fully solid, with a piece of parchment and a pen dangling limp in his fingers. At the end of the hall sat a grim throne, filled by a man who could only be a god, or at least who had the size of one. He leaned over his desk like he might leap over it at any second, teeth bared in fury.

As far as Zagreus had a plan when he'd thrown himself on Death's blade, none of this was it. He took a bracing breath of incense-thick air and said, as politely as he could, "I'd like to request an audience with Lord Hades. If you please."

"Um. I." Parchment rustled as the pale man in the red, quilted robe floated over. His eyes darted between Zagreus's face and the paper in his hands, as if he needed to verify something. "So, Um. Your cause of death was Death, huh? That's pretty neat. My brother doesn't really kill people much. Did you know—"

" _Silence_."

The man on the throne didn't bother jumping. He just stood and— _oh_ , that was a lot of god hidden behind that desk. It had to be Lord Hades himself going by the power that crackled around him, the brilliant red laurel and the heavily trademarked beard. Really, the beard was the best clue. It was even on the coins.

"Lord Hades, I presume?" Zagreus lifted his chin and stepped forward. He'd had lightning bolts thrown at him, had been nearly trampled by peacocks, had stolen olives from Ares's plate and had almost suffocated in Aphrodite's bosom. The worst anyone could do was kill him. And, apparently, that was less of a worry than it had been a few moments before.

"You have quite a bit of nerve, boy, showing up here after breaking in and ransacking my domain." Hades snarled, huge hands planted firmly atop his desk. "And now you dare to demand an audience with _me_? You _impertinent_ _little_ —"

"I _request_ an audience with you." Zagreus tried to keep his expression pleasant, and was fairly certain he failed. Everything about the man set his teeth on edge. Ares could have taken lessons from him in how to be combative. "And there would have been a lot less ransacking if you hadn't set your wretches on me. All I want is to find my mother. Tell me where she is and I'll be out of your beard in no time at all, _my Lord_."

A brief moment of confusion flickered through Hades dark eyes. He shook it off and knocked a pile of scrolls to the floor. One of the lurking shades scrambled to pick it up, obviously used to its master's temper. "And who, pray tell, is your mother then?"

"Her name was Kore."

Zagreus hadn't thought the silence could get heavier. He'd been wrong. It positively thickened, like stew left to cool. He could hear the dead breathe.

A much smaller woman stepped out from where she'd been hidden by the desk. Her golden hair had been piled atop her head, sewn in place with green ribbons and pinned by a skull, then further crowned by a red laurel. Rich jewels set in gold dripped from her ears and neck, ringed her wrists. "I haven't been called that name in a very long time," she murmured. Her voice seemed to echo across the hall.

When she smiled, Zagreus thought he might have died again.

"I think," his mother said, slowly, gently, "we ought to move this discussion somewhere more private."


	11. The House of Hades: Predication

Thanatos stared out across the Styx. It was calm, without nearly its usual collection of souls to cause eddies and ripples in the flow. After the Minotaur and his king had been sent back to Elysium, there simply hadn't been very many arrivals. Word must have reached the usual collection of plaintiffs that the wait time in the House of Hades was longer than its usual eternity. The shades that remained were quiet, no doubt happy just to be able to say they were there.

He considered going out to the mortal world to get started on the backlog. There were people up there who needed collecting. The call of mortals in need lingered in the back of his head, a gentle pull demanding he cut their ties and lead them to their rest or their punishment, whichever it would be. As his mother said, it wasn't a kindness to allow them linger past their time.

In spite of that, he stayed where he was. A stronger need held him rooted in place. He ought to have been annoyed by it, but it would have been like being annoyed at his own heartbeat: utterly pointless, and ultimately self-defeating. If he ignored it and forced himself to leave, he had little doubt he would accomplish nothing useful and he'd be right back where he started shortly after. For obvious reasons, Death wasn't a fan of fighting the inevitable.

Movement caught the corner of his eye, sun-touched skin and pale cloth approaching from behind. Thanatos didn't need to turn his head to know who it was. Prior to a few hours ago, no one in the House had seen enough of the sun to have been changed by it.

His suspicion proved accurate when Zagreus took the spot to his right on the balcony. At first he just stood there, shoulder to shoulder. It created a spot of heat that made Thanatos's skin hypersensitive to every faint shift of weight. Then, slowly, Zagreus settled in, folding his arms across the rail to rest his chin on. A quick glance showed that no one had followed; apparently the newly discovered Prince had been left to his own devices. His sword had been returned. Though it was odd seeing a new person bear arms in the House, it could only be right. Zagreus _was_ the prince, after all.

Thanatos gave himself a moment to consider how utterly ridiculous the entire thing was. From their first meeting all the way down to Zagreus being the _long lost Prince of the Underworld_ , it was like some sort of terrible play being acted out by untalented actors who hadn't even glanced at the script. Every part had obviously been designed for the Fates amusement. All that was missing was the chorus.

As he looked over at Zagreus, the unblemished line of his back where the scythe blade had emerged, Thanatos found himself grateful that the farce hadn't become a tragedy. He looked away and sighed. "I can't believe you killed yourself."

It was difficult to tell if Zagreus was upset at the accusation. He shifted, the faint pressure of his elbow digging into Thanatos's hip. There could have been more space between them. Whole inches of it, maybe even a foot. The balcony had room to spare, and no one else was nearby to overhear their conversation. Yet, even an additional inch would have been too much.

After far too long, the newly-found prince's head dropped forward, and his shoulders shook with a quiet laugh. "I can't believe you let me die." He glanced back up, a hint of a green eye hiding behind the dark fall of his hair. There was a slight crinkle there, a sign that laughter wasn't new to him. "I really didn't think you would."

"I'm sorry?" An eddy in the red flow of the Styx appeared at the edge of Thanatos's peripheral, and too late he'd realized he'd already been distracted enough to look at Zagreus directly. Again. _Damn it._ "You threw yourself on my blade, and you thought I would save you?"

Thought he _could_ save him?

Zagreus smiled and shrugged. "You did, didn't you?"

It became easier to look away after that.

The conversation played in the back of Thanatos's mind in an endless stream of _maybe_ and _what if_. It was instinctive to protest his own part, or lack of it, in how matters had played out. After all, Thanatos knew his job, and he knew damned well that he hadn't done it. But Zagreus's easy faith had taken root worse than the weeds in the Queen's garden. Even now, he found himself doubting. Why had he stayed with the body so long? He could have taken it directly to the Styx, or called for healing. A centaur heart might have bought some time, and he had enough of those to spare. Instead he'd sat there, useless, until there was nothing left to save.

Thanatos didn't often kill people by hand. The only times he could recall raising a weapon in truth had been against the occasional shade who refused to accept that their time had passed. Killing Zagreus had been... something. _What_ it had been remained to be decided. He could still see the wash of blood over his hands as he tried to hold hold the wound closed. Could feel the slow struggle as Zag's heartbeat slowed and his breath stopped. And then there had been nothing. No spirit to cut free or make whole, no spark of divinity just waiting for its host to reform. It had been just a hollow shell. For a second, he'd wondered if Zag had somehow leaped across the underworld and vanished into oblivion.

It was fortunate that Death didn't sleep, or he'd have nightmares.

And then, when the body was cold, he'd done what he always did. He'd followed his instincts. It hadn't even been a surprise when he'd appeared in the Great Hall, no more than when he appeared in a bedroom or the middle of a town square. It had simply been another place where he was needed.

An elbow jabbed into Thanatos's hip. He gasped and jerked away, glaring down into those unrepentant two-toned eyes. "You're thinking so loudly that I can almost hear the wheels rolling," Zagreus accused. His elbow twitched again, but Thanatos was ready and moved just fast enough to miss another bruise. "Obol for your thoughts?"

Thanatos grunted. "You're broke. All of your money stayed with your body."

Zagreus grinned. "I'll have to find another way to pay you then. Just tell me already."

It was hard to hold onto any sort of annoyance in the face of _that face._ For what had to be the thousandth time, Thanatos told himself to just stop looking. It didn't work any better than the previous ones. "You know you're going to have to return to Olympus, right? You can't stay here."

He'd only meant to offer a diversion by stating the obvious, and he regretted it immediately when the light in Zagreus's smile dimmed. "I know. I have a debt to repay, and Lord H—my father was all for throwing me out into the snow right away. I was raised in Olympus, and he wants nothing to do with us— with _them_. Mother convinced him that we have some time before Artemis gets worried."

So he hadn't gone entirely unmissed. Thanatos took a moment to worry at that thought, but he couldn't decide if it pleased or concerned him. There were other matters to wonder at, anyway. "And you'll keep their secret?"

"No." At the sight of Thanatos's raised eyebrows, Zagreus added, "Not for long, at least. I'll give them some time to decide how they want to break the news. I won't lie to Grandmother just so they can avoid a difficult conversation. It's already cost everyone too much."

"That's either selfish or incredibly mature of you."

"You're not the first person to say that."

Silence settled again. It was easier than the last. Almost comfortable, or as comfortable as it could be. The Styx bubbled a little as a passing shade risked the long wait time to rise up out of the Pool. Behind them, the noises of the House were still muted, oddly peaceful. Business would resume again soon enough, and Thanatos knew he would be grateful for the return of normalcy when it came, but the momentary change wasn't bad at all.

"You know, Than—atos, I..."

Thanatos cocked his head and eyed Zagreus, who had sunk nearly to his knees. The mumbles faded into complete nonsense. "What was that?"

Zagreus's face was somewhere between the glowing fires of the Phlegethon and a ripe pomegranate. "I said, maybe now that you know, you could... visit Olympus sometime. If you're in the area." Even red with embarrassment, he still managed a knowing look. "It would have been easier than stalking me in the forest."

It was Thanatos's turn to blush. "I'd hoped you hadn't noticed that."

"I put the pieces together."

Humiliation didn't even begin to describe it. If he hadn't felt so damned grounded, Thanatos would have vanished off to one of the far corners of the world. It was, he finally realized with surprisingly little annoyance, exactly the same sensation that had drawn him to those nameless woods time and again. It pulled him in and then pinned him like a butterfly.

And, of course, it had to be Zagreus's fault. Everything else lately had been.

Combined with the glare of Olympus, the general disdain of the those who inhabited it, the headache and misery that came with too much time aboveground, how much work he had to do... It was as good a reason as any to say _no, never_. It would have been ten times worse than the woods, where he could at least stay in the shade.

But Zagreus had looked away from him at some point during his silence, and his expression had faded to something like melancholy. Sparks flickered around his feet as he shuffled his weight.

It shouldn't have had an effect, it _shouldn't have,_ and yet Thanatos still heard himself say, "I'll see what I can do."

The absolute worst part was that when Zag smiled again, visiting Olympus didn't seem like such a terrible fate anymore.


	12. Epilogue: a New Thread

It was the warmest day Zagreus had ever experienced in his life. Clouds that lingered over the world for as long as he'd remembered had parted, finally allowing Helios to do his work unobstructed. The result was a brilliant flush of life, as if the world had been merely waiting for its moment. Fields flourished, trees bore fruit that was tender and green, and birds were _everywhere._ They didn't even attack him much.

Zagreus worked diligently at the task he'd been assigned, turning earth to soften it for planting. The skin across his shoulders stretched tight with sunburn and itched faintly from sweat. His hands were covered in grime up to the elbows. Even his fingernails were filthy. Supposedly, when he finished, it would be a bed of... something. He wasn't really certain what, only that his mother had been thrilled when she'd been able to make some of it take root strongly enough to transplant. Whatever it was, it was important that the plants go next to the fence, which meant a new bed. The stone apparently would provide shade for most of the day, which was far more important to plants than to sons.

He'd never been happier in his life.

"I admit, this wasn't what I expected when I returned to Olympus." Persephone commented from nearby as she pulled up a handful of weeds that had been in the process of choking her herbs. She eyed the plants thoughtfully, making decisions that not even gods could guess at before tossing them into one of the four seemingly random piles behind her. "I can't believe they just let this place go. All it needed was a little care now and again. I doubt the vineyards were allowed to grow wild."

They'd already gone over the matter of the long winter and how nothing had grown. Apparently that didn't make a difference to his mother. Plants needed care, period, even when they were covered by snow. "Well, now you have me to take care of them while you're away." His spade hit some sort of root with a heavier-than-usual _thunk_. He frowned and cleared away the dirt.

It was a tree root. Or, rather, he thought it was a tree root. It twisted through the ground in a rope as thick as his wrist. Where he'd hit it exposed a spot of pale flesh that oozed sap. He took his spade to the dirt behind it, tracking the root's path towards the wall, where it appeared to have somehow burrowed right through a crack in the stone.

"Huh."

"What have you got there?" In the corner of his eye, he saw his mother's attention shift from her weeding to him.

He grabbed it with both hands and tugged. Something gave, and there was a promising sensation of something breaking that vibrated through the wood, little jolts of wood trying to snap. "Just a root. It's pretty big." Another tug. It gave some more, but not enough. Zagreus shifted upwards, planted his feet, and pulled. His shoulders strained. Still the root resisted.

"A hoe might be more useful. Is it in the wall?"

He saw his mother stand, at exactly the same time a heavy _crack_ shook him to the bones. The root gave way, sending him sprawling backwards as the wall shuddered. The old, battered rocks wobbled, mortar that had been left untended over too many long, hard freezes finally crumbling. Stone toppled, shadowing his vision. And then—

_Pain._

Muted behind a pounding pressure in his skull, he heard his mother's cries, the calls for help that wouldn't come. None of the Olympians had shown any interest in cleaning her old garden, and so they'd all taken care to stay well away from any opportunity to be conscripted. He couldn't seem to open his eyes. Attempts to reassure her just came out mumbled and choked.

Slowly, the gleam of sunlight behind his eyelids faded. Soft darkness curled around his vision, dragging him down into a world of warm nothingness. Familiar nothingness.

Zagreus twisted himself into a position that felt like upright. He glared around but, just like the last time he'd been dead, there wasn't anything to glare at. Endless, endless void, peppered with what could have been either stars or illusions his mind conjured to fill the darkness.

It had to be his mother's influence, but his first thought was for the wall he was going to have to rebuild.

An experimental kick moved him up, and lightened the shadows enough to allow a hint of crimson to shine through. The red color grew stronger and stronger until, all at once, he broke the surface and stone steps solidified underfoot. He took a deep breath, which was immediately used to yelp in surprise when someone grabbed his arm and pulled him the rest of the way out of the pool.

Thanatos ran his hands through Zagreus's hair, flicking the blood of the Styx from it. "I thought I felt you coming."

Zagreus grinned and allowed himself to be helped out of the Pool, leaning far more than he actually needed. "Hey, Than. I thought it might be my turn to stalk you."

The grip on around his waist tightened, and there might have been a hint of a smile somewhere in the shadows of Death's hood. "Alright, _Zag_. Stalk away."

**Author's Note:**

> In addition to blood, death, childbirth, and the usual plethora of implied questionable behavior that comes from dealing with ancient Greek mythology (oh Zeus), there's also a graphic depiction of what would be labeled suicide under any other circumstances (he gets better).


End file.
